e, and Rose Mary lies in her last gracious sleep--

With a cold brow like the snows ere May,
With a cold breast like the earth till spring,
With such a smile as the June days bring--
A clear voice pronounces her beatitude:

Already thy heart remembereth
No more his name thou sought'st in death:
For under all deeps, all heights above,--
So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,--
Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love.

Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer
To blessed Mary's rose-bower:
Warmed and lit is thy place afar
With guerdon-fires of the sweet love-star,
Where hearts of steadfast lovers are.

The White Ship was written in 1880; _The King's Tragedy_ in the spring
of 1881. These historical ballads we must briefly consider together. The
memorable events of which Rossetti has made poetic record are, in _The
White Ship_, those associated with the wreck of the ship in which the
son and daughter of Henry I. of England set sail from France, and in
_The King's Tragedy_, with the death of James the First of Scots. The
story of the one is told by the sole survivor, Herold, the butcher of
Rouen; and of the other by Catherine Douglas, the maid of honour who
received popularly the name of Kate Barlass, in recognition of her
heroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers
of the King. It is scarcely possible to conceive in either case a
diction more perfectly adapted to the person by whom it is employed.
If we compare the language of these ballads with that of the sonnets or
other poems spoken in the author's own person, we find it is not first
of all gorgeous, condensed, emphatic. It is direct, simple, pure and
musical; heightened, it is true, by imagery acquired in its passage
through the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentially
the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The
diction belongs in each case to the period of the ballad in which it
is employed, and yet there is no wanton use of archaisms, or any
disposition manifested to resort to meretricious artifices by which to
impart an appearance of probability to the story other than that which
comes legitimately of sheer narrative excellence. The characterisation
is that of history with the features softened that constituted the prose
of real life, and with the salient, moral, and intellectual lineaments
brought into relief. Herein the