SOURCE: O'Donnell, Brennan. “D. G. Rossetti's ‘The Stream's Secret’ and the Epithalamion.” Victorian Poetry 25, no. 2 (summer 1987): 187-92.

In the following essay, O'Donnell compares and contrasts Rossetti's “The Stream's Secret” and the conventions of the epithalamion poetic form.

In lines 211-216 of D. G. Rossetti's “The Stream's Secret,” the speaker turns his thoughts away from the stream he has been addressing throughout the poem and speaks of another, imaginary location where he hopes he will finally receive word that he is to be united with his lover. It is a difficult stanza, and untangling its complexities and especially its allusions is crucial to an understanding of the poem:

                              Ah! by a colder wave           On deathlier airs the hour must come Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.           Between the lips of the low cave Against that night the lapping waters lave,                               And the dark lips are...