The Full Text of “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde”
1I have desired, and I have been desired;
2But now the days are over of desire,
3Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;
4Where is the hire for which my life was hired?
5Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
6Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
7Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,
8And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
9And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;
10Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
11Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles,
12Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,
13The dross of life, of love, of spent desire;
14Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles,—
15Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
16Oh vanity of vanities, desire;
17Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,
18Turning my garden plot to barren mire;
19Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire,
20Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Introduction
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde" is told from the perspective of "Soeur Louise"—that is, Sister Louise, also known as Louise de La Vallière, a 17th-century Frenchwoman who was one of Louis XIV's mistresses until she gave up life at court for a convent. In this poem, she grieves all the time she's wasted on love and desire. Though she's not yet entirely free of "longing and love," she clearly believes these are futile endeavors, ending only in heartache and a host of unwanted memories. The poem thus suggests that love breaks hearts and ruins lives—and all for little reward. "Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde" was published in Christina Rossetti's 1881 poetry collection A Pageant and Other Poems.
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Summary
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I have wanted others, and others have wanted me. But that's all over now. My fires of passion are all burned out; ashes and dying embers mock what I once felt. Where is the purpose for which I was created? Desire is surely the most pointless of all pointless things!
I ache with lost longings and loves. My desires are nothing more than a fire that's been put out. And memory is an endless swamp. And love is a bottomless fountain of tears. Desire is surely the most pointless of all pointless things!
Now, my heart—the place where love has died—slowly drips drop after drop of fire. These are the final useless remnants of old love and used-up passion. Alas, the rose of my life grows nothing but thorns now. Desire is surely the most pointless of all pointless things!
Desire is surely the most pointless of all pointless things; it has kept my hopes from growing and it has made my garden into bare swampland. Oh dying love, oh extinguished flames: desire is surely the most pointless of all pointless things!
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Themes
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The Pain and Futility of Desire
“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” is told from the perspective of “Soeur Louise” (or Sister Louise) herself—that is, Louise de La Vallière, one of Louis XIV’s mistresses, who eventually gave up her life at court to join a convent. Having “desired” and “been desired,” she laments, counts for nothing in the end: her memories of “perished pleasure” do not bring her happiness or satisfaction, but rather remind her how painful it is when love ends. The speaker isn’t mourning love itself so much as what love did to her. She can’t help but to wonder what her life might have been had she had never been distracted and “stunt[ed]” by “longing and love.” The poem thus warns against desire, which the speaker believes burns through one’s life, leaving nothing but heartache in its wake.
Having turned from the court to enter a convent, the speaker has plenty of time to look back on her former life as the king's mistress—and she doesn't like what she sees. Rather than being comforted by old memories of love, she admits that her “memory” is nothing more than “a bottomless gulf of mire” (or endless swampland), and love itself is "a fount of tears outrunning measure.” In other words, her thoughts of the time when she lived for love and sex now feel like a pit of mud she can't scramble out of and inspire endless fountains of tears. The thought of her past love affairs, then, both entraps her and hurts her. Even in a convent, where she's meant to be keeping her mind on God, memories of lost passion torment her.
Worse still, she feels, desire itself "stunt[ed]" her, obsessing her so much that she wasn't able to live up to her potential. As she poignantly asks: “Where is the hire for which my life was hired?” The question suggests that she feels that desire diverted her from her true purpose and robbed her of meaning and direction. Indeed, she sees her youthful longing and passion as having impeded her “hope,” suggesting that it stopped her from developing into the person she might have otherwise been. Love didn’t satisfy her yearning but “turn[ed her] garden plot to barren mire.” In other words, it used up all her energy—and yet came to nothing.
In her pain and remorse, the speaker thus laments having given so much of her life to love, wishing she had instead dedicated herself to something more substantial. Desire, to her, is nothing but the "vanity of vanities"—the most pointless and empty of pointless, empty things. Sadly for her, its emptiness doesn't make it any easier to escape or forget.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde”
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Lines 1-3
I have desired, and I have been desired;
But now the days are over of desire,
Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;"Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde" (French for "Sister Louise of Mercy") alludes to a 17th-century French woman, Louise de La Vallière, who spent 13 years in King Louis XIV's court as one of his mistresses. She loved the king and was heartbroken and humiliated when he turned his attention to another woman. She eventually left for a convent where she became "Soeur Louise." This poem takes place in the aftermath of her relationship with the king.
She starts out by saying that she has been both subject to and the object of passionate desires. Now that her relationship has come to an end, however, her life is empty of passion, and "dust and dying embers mock" her metaphorical "fire." In other words, all the roaring passion she once had for the king has burned through her and nothing remains but the tiniest glow, which will soon be gone.
Bold repetitions make these opening lines feel both emphatic and desperate:
I have desired, and I have been desired:
But now the days are over of desire,
Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;The balanced anaphora of "I have desired, and I have been desired" makes it clear that the speaker's passion was once reciprocated: she's been on either end of intense longings. There was a time when her life was full to bursting with love and sex, when she had little time for thinking about anything else. Epistrophe—the repetition of "desired"/"desire" at the ends of the first two lines—emphasizes the poem's central concern right from the start. And the repetition of "Now" draws the reader's attention to the speaker's present unhappy circumstances. She and the king may have once been gaga over each other, but that certainly isn't the case anymore.
The poem is made up of four quintains, or five-line stanzas. It is written in iambic pentameter, meaning lines contain five iambs (metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm), as in:
I have | desired, | and I | have been | desired;
The poem's regular shape keeps on carrying poor Soeur Louise back to the same dreadful conclusion: desire is nothing but the "vanity of vanities," the greatest possible waste of a life.
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Lines 4-5
Where is the hire for which my life was hired?
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
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Lines 6-10
Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,
And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;
Oh vanity of vanities, desire! -
Lines 11-15
Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles,
Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,
The dross of life, of love, of spent desire;
Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles,—
Oh vanity of vanities, desire! -
Lines 16-18
Oh vanity of vanities, desire;
Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,
Turning my garden plot to barren mire; -
Lines 19-20
Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire,
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Parallelism
This poem uses copious parallelism to keep its stanzas (and its speaker) circling around inescapable regrets and pains.
In the poem's first three lines, for example, parallelism immediately draws attention to the speaker's past and current relationship with "desire":
I have desired, and I have been desired;
But now the days are over of desire,The anaphora on "I have desired" and "I have been desired" stresses that the speaker has experienced both sides of desire: wanting and being wanted. Epistrophe (the repetition of "desired"/"desire" at the ends of lines 1 and 2—also an example of polyptoton) emphasizes the fact that, while desire was once the speaker's whole life, that's all over now.
Lines 6-7 also use parallelism to emphasize how far the speaker feels from her former passions:
Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,
And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;The powerful anaphora here first emphasizes the fact that the speaker's "longing and love" are nothing but a "disenkindled fire" now, a burned-out shell of what they once were. Then, those repeated "and"s pile disappointment on disappointment.
A similar pile of parallel disappointments appears in lines 12-13:
Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,
The dross of life, of love, of spent desire;The repetition of "drop by drop" evokes the slow, painful draining of passion and life from the speaker's heart. And the anaphora on "of" makes it clear that the word "dross" (which means useless trash) equally describes the speaker's "life," "love," and "desire." In other words, looking back on her life and all the time she's devoted to her love affair, she feels both drained and cheated.
The poem's parallelism rises to a high dramatic pitch in the closing stanza:
Oh vanity of vanities, desire;
Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,
Turning my garden plot to barren mire;
Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire,
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!The anaphora on the speaker's repeated cry—"oh"—imbues these lines with emotion and drama, revealing how utterly forlorn the speaker feels thinking back on her wasted time and energy. And the parallelism on the verbs "stunting" and "turning," for one last time, emphasizes that love has changed the speaker, and only in the worst ways.
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Repetition
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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Allusion
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde
- The hire
- Disenkindled
- Gulf
- Fount
- Dross
- Stunting
- Barren
- Death-struck
Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde-
The name Louise de la Vallière took after she became a nun. Her title, "de la Miséricorde," means "of mercy."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde”
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Form
"Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde" is a dramatic monologue—a poem written in the voice of a particular character. Here, that character is the titular Sister Louise, a Carmelite nun who was once the favored lover of the flamboyant French king Louis XIV.
The poem is made up of 20 lines of iambic pentameter (that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "I have | desired, | and I | have been | desired"). Those lines are arranged into four quintains (five-line stanzas) whose language circles around and around as Sister Louise laments her lost love and her present predicament.
Through intense repetitions, a regular structure, and a poignant refrain ("Oh vanity of vanities, desire!"), the poem suggests that Sister Louise is trapped in an agonizing dilemma. She knows her affair with the king is over and done with; she knows her passion has only brought her pain; she still can't stop thinking about the love she's lost.
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Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter. That means that its lines are built from five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's the first line, for example:
I have | desired, | and I | have been | desired;
Rossetti sometimes tweaks this steady, pulsing, familiar rhythm (one of the commonest in English-language poetry) for dramatic effect. For example, take a look at lines 6-7:
Longing | and love, | pangs of | a per- | ished pleasure,
Longing | and love, | a dis- | enkind- | led fire,Both of these lines begin with a trochee (the opposite foot to an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm); the third foot of line 7 is also a trochee. Those changes in the rhythm make poor Sister Louise's voice sound ragged and desperate. Much as she might wish it, she's nowhere near free of her futile, tyrannical "longing."
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Rhyme Scheme
The first three stanzas of the poem follow an ABBAB rhyme scheme. The A rhyme changes from stanza to stanza (desired and hired in stanza 1, pleasure and measure in stanza 2, trickles and prickles in stanza 3). However, the B rhyme stays the same from one stanza to the next: it's always an /ire/ sound, as in desire, fire, and mire. "Desire" is the central word here: it's a rhyme word at least once in every stanza, and usually twice.
The last stanza deviates from this pattern, following a forceful AAAAA rhyme scheme instead: desire, higher, mire, fire, desire. This makes the conclusion feel all the more pronounced and resolute. The speaker, those urgent closing rhymes suggest, is done with this desire business! Or at least, she'd like to be. But desire's insistent reappearance equally implies that she's haunted by her longings.
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Speaker
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The speaker of “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” is "Soeur Louise" herself—aka Louise de La Vallière, a mistress of Louis XIV who left the royal court for a convent. By all accounts, Louise's love for the king was genuine and unselfish. She was the king's favorite mistress for some years, but eventually his head was turned by another lady, Madam de Montespan. The heartbroken Louise wished to retreat to a convent, but the king wouldn't allow it; he forced her to continue living at court for many years before finally granting her wish.
It's no wonder, then, that Rossetti portrays Sister Louise as being finished with "longing and love"! She still feels the pain of having loved and lost, but wants to turn her attention to something more meaningful now that she's seen the havoc romantic love can wreak.
Rossetti might have used Sister Louise's voice to express some of her own feelings of desire and regret. Like Sister Louise, Rossetti eventually chose religious devotion over love, and since this poem was written long after she had rejected three different suitors, it may be that Rossetti was trying to dignify her choice to remain alone in a society that placed immense pressure on women to marry and have children.
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“Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Setting
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The poem takes place in the convent that Louise de La Vallière joined after she left the royal court of Louis XIV. But readers would have to know something about Louise's life in order to figure that out; the poem doesn't describe her physical surroundings at all. Instead, it focuses entirely on her mental and emotional state as she looks back on the years she wasted loving a man who ultimately replaced her.
In looking back to a 17th-century world of court intrigue and devastating passions, Rossetti was also reflecting on her own experiences and her own world. Victorian women who had love affairs were as liable to be cast aside and scorned as women of Louise's time—and Rossetti, like Louise, eventually turned away from romantic love in favor of a life of religious and artistic devotion.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde”
Literary Context
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was one of the most important and popular of the Victorian poets. "Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde" was published in her fourth poetry collection, A Pageant and Other Poems (1881). Her prior collections were so successful the publisher agreed to publish this one without even having read it!
Rossetti was born in England to a large and talented family and grew up surrounded by art. (Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also a well-known poet and painter.) Her first major collection, Goblin Market (and especially its title poem, which started a Victorian vogue for sinister fairy tales), was hailed right away as something wild and new. As one contemporary critic said:
To read these poems after the laboured and skilful, but not original, verse which has been issued of late, is like passing from a picture gallery with its well-feigned semblance of nature, to the real nature out-of-doors which greets us with the waving grass and the pleasant shock of the breeze.
Many of Rossetti's contemporaries saw her as a successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the wildly popular and famous poet of Sonnets from the Portuguese. Like Browning, Rossetti wrote movingly about her inner life (and had a fondness for Italy—Browning because she moved there, Rossetti because she was half-Italian). But Rossetti's poetry often followed a wilder and weirder path than Browning's, exploring visions both dreamy and nightmarish. Perhaps Rossetti's contemporaries mostly associated her with Browning because the two were those rarest of Victorian birds: celebrated, successful, widely-read poets who also happened to be women.
Today, Rossetti is often remembered as a proto-feminist figure for her poetry's explorations of women's hopes, sufferings, and desires—and the ways in which male shortsightedness and cruelty can smash women's lives. This poem's unfortunate Sister Louise is only one of many scorned and unhappy women in Rossetti's world.
Historical Context
The poem is told from the perspective of Louise de La Vallière (a.k.a. "Soeur Louise de la Misèricorde"), a 17th-century French courtier and a favorite mistress of Louis XIV. By all accounts, Louise genuinely loved the king and was loyally devoted to him. But the king's attention wandered. Forced to endure Louis's many infidelities, the subject of constant gossip, Louise began to find life at court unbearable. At last, fed up and heartbroken, she asked to leave court and enter a convent. The king refused her request for many years. When she was finally granted permission to go, she said that any "suffering at the convent" would pale in comparison to "what they made [her] suffer" at court.
Once installed in her convent, Louise authored two manuscripts in which she explored virtue, physical passions, nature, and God's grace—questions Rossetti's work was likewise invested in. Rossetti herself rejected a life of love and marriage (she turned down three separate suitors) in order to devote her life to writing and religion.
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More “Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde” Resources
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External Resources
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Louise de La Vallière — Learn more about the woman through whom Rossetti speaks in this poem.
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A Biography of the Poet — Read about Christina Rossetti's life and career in this Poetry Foundation article.
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More on Rossetti — Find a wealth of Rossetti resources at the Victorian Web.
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A Pageant and Other Poems — View the Library of Congress's digitized copy of Rossetti's fourth poetry collection, in which this poem was first published.
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The Works of Soeur Louise — In her years at the convent, Louise de La Valliere wrote about God, virtue, and passion; read more about her writings at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Christina Rossetti
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