Dante Gabriel Rossetti captured the tragedy of nineteenth century Victorian society on canvas. William Bill Scott’s poem Rosabell (renamed Maryanne) inspired Rossetti’s work. Scott’s poem tells of a boy and girl growing up in the countryside, professing their love for one another. As the years passed, the girl cast longing eyes to the city and left the country and the boy to marry herself to the high society.
Her new love lured her into the sewers of sin, staining her purity of the past with her prostitution of the present. While she loved the promises of Victorian society, its reality crushed her. One day, the young farmer found her in the city. He reached out his hand and took her wrist and spoke of his undying love.
In measured strokes, Rossetti immortalized their reunion in his painting Found (1854). He shows the determination of the young man proclaiming his love to the woman who left. His simple clothes betray a farmer’s existence and clash with the gaudy attire and painted face of a society prostitute. At his words, she slumps away, lamenting that she lets another love—the infatuation of society—take his place.
Love fills hearts.
This deep emotional attachment links even the stoniest of hearts to something. A hardened miser loves his money. The sordid harlot loves her wages. The sadistic murderer loves his power of death over life. Few hearts exist without love.
Even though Rossetti’s country girl left her first love, her heart filled with another love—the love of society. So it is with people and their love of God’s word. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psa 1:1-2).
Overflow with love for the gospel.
When a heart overflows with love for the gospel, it leaves little room for the love of sin. Those who “refuse to love the truth” become deceived by the love of sin and enter the ranks of the perishing (2 Thes 2:10). As long as Rossetti’s maiden loved the boy, she stayed pure. When the object of her love changed, her moral purity changed too. The object of our love determines how we live because our actions flow from our heart (Mark 7:21).
Does your love of the scriptures fill your heart (Psa. 119:97)? Or has the vices of the world thrust God’s message from you? What love fills your heart?
Preaching Minister
