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The Woodspurge
The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will,—
I sat now, for the wind was still.
Between my knees my forehead was,–
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,—
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
Can we derive any meaning from grief? Can we wrest significance from the most primal of emotions? Can loss become discovery?
In this poem, Rossetti grapples with these questions—and gives a perplexingly ambiguous and thought-provoking answer. The first stanza begins with a chaotic rush, evoked through the image and the whistling of the wind. One moment it flaps “loose,” the next it is “still.” The “w” sounds whip through the lines until we feel almost dizzy.
Weirdly passive, the speaker is at the beck and call of the wind’s “will,” pushed and pulled hither and thither like a puppet, without a flicker of resistance.
It’s hard to know whether he or the wind is “shaken out dead”; the two merge into one. Worse than a puppet, he’s like a zombie. As the stanza comes to an end with the repetition of “still,” we know we are at the heart of a mystery: the mystery of his heart.
Our sense of disturbance deepens in the second stanza. The speaker’s remark, “between my knees my forehead was,” feels oddly detached, as if his body were acting independently of his mind. The repetition of “my” suggests intense self-involvement, even while his “lips” and “hair” and “ears” escape from his control. Somehow he manages to be self-obsessed without possessing a self. With lips pursed shut, unkempt hair and sensitive to every passing noise, he is the very picture of mania.
With eyes “wide open” he appears both pathetic and petrifying. If we saw him in the street, we’d run in the opposite direction! His stare fixes on “ten weeds” —an icily specific number that hints at a state of paranoia in which randomness takes on false profundity. The insistent rhyme running throughout the poem evokes the tension of a tightly wound spring: the intimation of a fate that cannot be avoided.
In the final stanza, we discover the reason for the man’s behavior. He is in the grip of “perfect grief.” “Perfect” in this context means absolute—overwhelming. His mechanical, jerky movements are those of someone under the influence of unthinkable pain. The result is acute alienation.
Whole libraries have been written about the meaning of suffering, but to our surprise Rossetti swats it aside. There may not be any “wisdom” to be gained from mourning at all—we may even forget it in time. The only thing the speaker has gained from the experience is the sight of the “woodspurge”—a green herb with “three cups in one.” Note how, within the framework of the poem’s deliberately ordinary language, the unusual word “woodspurge” leaps off the page and becomes unforgettable.
What are we to make of this? The tone of the concluding line could be anywhere from high seriousness to wisecracking levity. Re-reading the poem, we may choose to find symbolic significance in the driving wind and the flower with its “three cups in one.” The wind is a common metaphor for the spirit; and the flower reminds us of the central mystery of Christianity: the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; the Trinity that breaks the rule of fate.
On the other hand, we may read the poem as a psychological study. The wind’s “will” may be an delusion projected onto it by the speaker, compelled to disavow his self.
There is something very refreshing in the way in which Rossetti, as a poet, rejects the churning subjective realm, and finds release in the simple fact of the flower. With this sudden, unexpected glimpse, the speaker returns to the objective world and to his wits. The plant’s green color suggests the promise of growth and happiness.
Rossetti neither condemns nor celebrates sorrow. While recognizing its dark reality, he does not see it as a source of ultimate value. Perhaps we can say, in conclusion, that it is in our crystal-clear perception of nature that our life is endlessly renewed.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was an English poet, painter, and translator.
