The Star in the West

80 THE STAR IN THE WEST blending of Messaline and Margaret in the form of one sweet woman . In none of the sonnets can it be said that there is a single scene of lechery . True we shall have our Buchanans and their ilk , and we still have Rossetti's poems with one of his finest sonnets excised to please Mrs. Grundy ; but matters it what the sewer-rat thinks of the linnet's songs ? leave him in his dank drain , for we need him not , neither his opinions . There is a great lesson embodied in this poem . The lesson that Love is only worthy its hallowed name , when free ; that it is only worth having when freely given , and worth keeping when freely held , without bond or writ . This freedom we find in the very first sonnet : Against the fiat of that God discrowned , Unseated by Man's Justice , and replaced By Law most bountiful and maiden - faced And Mother - minded : passing the low bound Of Man's poor law we leapt at last and found Passion ; and passing the dim halls disgraced Found higher love and larger and more chaste , A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground .' The first day of meeting he gazes on her , and wonders whether Fate had found at last a woman's love for him ; hopelessly he turns away and sinks the dream of his soul in despair and “ Kindled a corpse light and proclaimed ' The day '!” Thither I fled , busied myself with these ; When - lo ! I saw her shadow following ! In every cosmic season - tide of spring She rose , being the spring : in utter peace She was with me and in me : thus I saw Ours was not love , but destiny , and law .? | Alice , an Adultery , vol . ii, p . 64 . Ibid . vol . ii, p . 65 .