I have been here before

This is probably my favourite Dante Gabriel Rossetti poem, which is about the seeming circularity of life - it's taken from the pictured 1983 collection, edited by J. M. Cohen.

I'd highly recommend this volume:


Sudden Light

I HAVE been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

---

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

---