"Who Has Seen the Wind" Christina Rossetti Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you. But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I. But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. | The Victorian Era of poetry was parallel to the Transcendentalist movement and while poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson strove to stretch the boundaries of poetic application and expression some were content to hone the traditions of past masters. Christina Rossetti’s was one of these dazzling traditionalists, she wrote verse that was expertly refined and of the many existing forms of poetry she chose the ballad, to serve as her crowning achievement. A narrative often given a musical melody and/or harmony, this form of verse derives it’s name from the medieval French word: chanson balladée or ballade, which originally meant "dancing songs". Though, some believe that ballads were developed among the ancient Greek poets, they were most popular amidst the poetry and song of the British Isles from before the Medieval period to the 19th century and though they decreased in demand steadily onwards. An Italian born in London, Rossetti combined her femininity, grace and strong spirituality to create truly unique lyrics from mundane and commonplace foundations, she added her own signature flourish with vivid feeling and calculated risks. She introduced variance gradually instead of throwing it all in, and somehow this has made her literary adventures all the more complex and enunciated. As the decade’s have progressed Rossetti’s brilliance only seems to grow with increasing numbers of poetic scholars discovering new levels sagacity contained within her work. So it has come into discussion that though Christina Rossetti has always been considered one of the greatest female poets of Victorian era, perhaps she is one of the greatest poets of the time regardless of her gender. |
Rossetti uses repetition extensively and to great effect, her poem is seemingly composed of two unseparated 4 line stanzas of identical phonetic structure: each composed of the same amount of syllables per line and matching rhyme scheme. Her first line, “Who has seen the wind?” is reminiscent of the archaic Greek evocation of the muse, this line is repeated in its entirety as the sixth line in order to begin the second stanza. This choice facilitates Rossetti’s solid cadence and bring her composition full circle allowing her to finish the following lines with unfamiliar endings. The closure of the second line, “Neither I nor you,” is flipped in the sixth line to “Neither you nor I,” this demonstrates that the same beginnings can have opposite but reciprocal ends. The third line commences with “But when the . . .” as does the seventh line, but the third line concludes with “ . . . leaves hang trembling,” in contradiction of the seventh line’s closure which is “ . . . trees bow down their heads,” signifying that one event can cause both fear(“ . . . leaves hang trembling,”) and submission(“ . . . trees bow down their heads.”) interchangeably. The fourth and final line(eighth line) are almost wholly identical save for the ultimate word, which in the fourth line is “through” but changes in the eighth line to “by”. This may be symbolic of the antithetical opinions produced by the divergent accoutrements of a single happening. These varying translations can cause twin events to generate fraternal ends. The composition as a whole carries the constant theme of the universal cause and effect theory, and is set in the arrangement of four parallel lines, each stanza is a sovereign universe, both the exact same and altogether different simultaneously. The two sentences or stanzas can become a metaphor for the subtle but identifiable differences between the outcomes of an occurrence. Additionally, how two situations which are extremely similar if arranged to accentuate the differences between them, will appear vastly different. For example though the differences between her two poetic sentences are minute, they are audiby distinctive. The repitition in Rossetti’s work gives it a second depth of meaning and layers the allegories even more decadently.
The ambience of Rossetti’s poem is almost neutral, neither slow nor fast, jubilant nor somber. Her deliberate repetition causes her composition to feel fluent yet gradual like a gently sinuous river as averse to a bubbling brook or gushing waterway. There are no dams in Rossetti’s path, in fact there are no blockades at all synthetic or natural her eloquence is smooth and raw. When looked at as a whole her composition becomes an extended metaphor for nature of evolution. For though change itself is invisible, the acts it catalyzes and impacts it leaves behind are anything but. The wind has long symbolized change and not without reason for it can bring catastrophe: chills, blizzards, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and all manor of natural disaster, for which it is virtually the sole method of conveyance. But the wind can also bring about life: in the form of spring showers, the first thaw, the spread of seeds, shaping the adaptations of plants and helping all manner of animals to fly. It has been harnessed by humans for generations as source of energy, from propelling ships and boats first along the nile and than in other cultures, to agricultural uses such as pumping water and grinding grain through the use of windmills, the dutch used it to drain the rhine river delta, lakes and marshes, it is still used as a renewable energy source today. Gales bring about the revolution of the seasons: the deluge of autumn leaves, snowflakes, flower petals and fruit in turn. Wind pushes clouds over the sun and pulls them away. monsoon It’s powers have long been recognized through the antiquity of man from wind deities in pagan and polytheistic religions to the breath of god, hot air balloons, the invention of the airplane and renewable energy. Rossetti’s poem depicts the consequences of the inescapable advance of time, but of course she is only human and is as a result as incapable of capturing the changes themselves, as anyone. We cannot predict the exact arrival of innovations or the details of world’s reaction to them, we are left only vague prophecies and faint inclinations. Changes is neither physical nor tangible, and like the wind can only be witnessed through the medium of it’s causatum. Thus Rossetti’s change is as subtly powerful and inevitable as air itself.
“Who Has Seen the Wind,” is written in the format of a standard ballad, this is often called “Ballad measure,” or “ballad stanza” even “ballad meter,” depending on the context. A ballad can be rigorously held to a organization of solely four-lined stanzas almost always drafted in ABCB rhyme scheme, with the first and third lines carrying four accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying three. However, the syllable structure of Rossetti’s poem in more unique, and though she writes in iambic pentameter her poem is not composed of stanzas with alternating numbers of syllables instead consisting of two five syllables line followed by one eight syllable line, and a six syllable line. Her unusual syllables reflect the transitions towards the free form poetry characteristic of the period.
Christina Rossetti was an icon of women’s poetry her topics ranged from romantic and natural to children’s and devotional. Her writing exemplified the tone of the Victorian Era: darkly elegant and slightly sophisticated. She uses literary devices masterfully and her phonetic format is flawless while bordering on experimental. Her combines traditional formats and themes with contemporary styles and tone. Perhaps this is why her poetry was treated most generously by posterity, unlike many of her fellow Victorian poets her work’s popularity neither faded nor become an item of mockery or critique, whatever small decline it may have suffered in twentieth century it swiftly revived and survived to become an object of more critical interest in the century's final decades, largely propelled by the birth of feminist criticism, spanning from Rossetti’s gender issues and her status as a women. Her reputation battles with that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for greatest poetess of the age, but following the older poet’s death in 1861 many saw her as Browning's deserved successor. A quote from Rossetti’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti reflects this most strongly, “She is the finest woman-poet since Mrs. Browning, by a long way; and in artless art, if not in intellectual impulse, is greatly Mrs. Browning’s superior.” said Daniel to William Sharp to later be published in The Atlantic Monthly (June 1895). This exemplified the unmistakable differences in the two female poet’s strengths. However, even though she was slightly more recent of the two many consider Rossetti more gentile, traditional and soft-spoken as opposed to Browning’s audacious intellectual, political and wide address, yet, Rossetti’s work was superior in poetic display, she was meticulous in her diction, tone, and form enabling her poetry beauty in it’s simplicity.