Love's Baubles (1897)

Dante Rossetti’s Sonnet XXIII: Love's Baubles inspired John Byam Shaw’s 1897 oil painting of that same name. Cupid carries fruits and flowers which he drops from his basket, while a host of women pursue him, hoping to gather some of his tokens that they might find true love. Yet the tone of the painting and the poem, below, indicates that such scrambling only leads to disappointment and disillusion:

I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore

Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:

And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,

Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.

And from one hand the petal and the core

Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot

Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—

Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

At last Love bade my Lady give the same:

And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;

And as I took them, at her touch they shone

With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.

And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,

Follies of love are love's true ministers.”

Only the love of Christ does not disappoint. There are those who fall in love and grow cold, and those whose love is reciprocated, but death parts them.