Dante Rossetti and the Paradox of Time

Sonnet "Silent Noon" Celebrates the Peaceful Union of Two Lovers

Jul 4, 2009

Rossetti portrays time paradoxically as that which lends peacefulness and elevation, but also as that which is simultaneously haunting in its inevitable passing.

In his sonnet Silent Noon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti focuses on lovers during the noontime hour, a time frame in which the reader is presented with in the title, before the poem even begins. By providing such a title, Rosetti is also establishing time as a limited facet, and pointing out to the reader that the poem will render a marked hour.

The title, moreover, encompasses the two notions that will be explored through the text: a silence that Rossetti will later define as an expression of love, and the notion that time works paradoxically to both enable and disable such silence.

Time as Paradoxical

The poem begins with intensity and immediacy, as the opening line, “Your eyes lie open in the long fresh grass,” is not only composed in the present tense, but also includes seven stressed syllables, four of which occur within the first three words, and all of which lend a sense of volume and acceleration.

This begins the first formal paradox: if the title of this work is Silent Noon, then why does Rossetti begin so quickly and loudly? Here there is something lurking beneath the textual surface, a tone that the poet creates with this highly accentuated line, yet contradicts with the peaceful and restful image contained therein.

Just as the formal values of the first line undermine the content, the natural occurrences of the poem seem to undermine the lover’s attained peacefulness, provoking an underlying tone of uneasiness. As the woman’s hands lie open in the grass, and as her “eyes smile peace,” the natural world imposes change, accumulation, and movement: the sky is “billowing,” “scattering,” and “amassing” as the lovers share their “silence.”

Moreover, line three combines the two phrases, “Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms.” Here the strong caesura separates the opposing values of “peace” and “gloom,” yet allots them space within the same line.

Images of Paradox

The “nest” that the lovers share, although it is beneath a “billowing,” “scattering” sky, is then described in lines 5-7 with celebratory language. Within it the poet sees, “golden kingcup-fields with silver edge / Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.”

Line 8 then inserts an imagistic paradox: “’Tis visable silence, still as the hour glass.” It is here where the reader is challenged to consider how “silence” is “visible,” and how the “hourglass” is “still.” The conclusion is paradoxical, as the “hourglass” is only “still” when time runs out, when the “noon” falls over into the next hour and is thus no more.

Hence the notion of time in this poem is twofold: it is the source of a certain governing anxiety, but also acts as an ultimate provider, granting a frame during which the poet can experience the bliss of his lover. Lines 9-11 seem to propose that, although this hour is not fixated and will inevitably pass, it is also suspended. It is as if, within these lines, time paradoxically exists “outside of time.”

This is illustrated through the image of the “dragon-fly” that occurs within the sonnet’s sestet. The dragon-fly, “Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.” This image is then connected or defined by the line that follows: “So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.” Hence, like the hanging, winged “dragon-fly,” this hour is also “wing’d” or suspended, and “dropt…from above.”

But fused within this suspended moment is an uneasiness that dangles within the image of the dragon-fly, as Rossetti describes it as hanging, “like a blue thread loosened from the sky.” This is ultimately an image that expresses the anxiety of the passing time, the fear that when the hour runs out the lovers will be unable to relocate that shared, suspended moment. For what suspends the hour is a mere thread that blends into the invisible hue of the sky.

Moreover, the gift of this hour is viewed as undeserved by the poet, as in line 12 he refers to it as a “deathless dower,” or an inheritance granted without the price of death. In other words, the poet is aware that the price of this blissful union will be paid with the very death of it. Time has enabled their union, but will also disable it.

And so, if the expression of this hour in sonnet form is accurately rendered by the poet, it cannot be representative only of what is peaceful, still, and passive, but must also simultaneously and paradoxically express that the hour is active and rapidly changing.

With the last line, the reader does find such change: the noontime hour has passed, and the lover’s union has ceased. While the first line of the sonnet is composed in the present tense, the last line denotes the past tense: “When twofold silence was the song of love.” Hence, this was an hour of “twofold silence.” It was a “silent noon,” a “lover’s hour,” where time, in its rapid passing, seemed to have stopped.

The copyright of the article Dante Rossetti and the Paradox of Time in World Poetry is owned by Ana Hartman. Permission to republish Dante Rossetti and the Paradox of Time in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.