Summary
Line 1 of Stanza 1 opens on an image of the wind as it stops blowing and becomes "still" (1). The second line tells what happened when the wind was still blowing—it shook out the "dead" leaves and debris from the trees and the hills (2). The speaker appears in line 3; he tells us that he was being compelled by the wind to walk. In line 4, the speaker reveals that now that the wind has ceased, he has sat down.
In Stanza 2, the speaker describes how his body is positioned while he is sitting—his knees are between his forehead, almost as if he is in a fetal position. The speaker tells us in line 2 of Stanza 2 that his lips were "drawn in" as if to speak, but he actually does not cry "Alas!" (6). The speaker describes his hair descending down towards the grass due to his fetal position in line 7. In line 8, the speaker describes that his ears passively pick up on the passage of time during the day.
In Stanza 3, the speaker tells us that his "eyes" are "wide open" (9). Because of his position, he has "some ten weeds" in his line of sight (10). One of the weeds in the speaker's line of sight is the woodspurge, which sits in the shade. The speaker describes the woodspurge: it has "three cups in one" (12). (Look at the "Other" section of this guide for a fuller description of the woodspurge plant. Its leaves form into shapes that look like little cups and always come in groups of threes).
In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker moves on to describe his emotional state: that of "perfect grief" (13). He declares that in the face of such grief, "there need not be" virtues such as "wisdom" or "memory" (13-4). In other words, these good things are canceled out by the grief. The speaker only retains the "one thing then learnt" from that period of his life: the fact that the woodspurge has three cups (15).
Analysis
On the surface "the Woodspurge" appears quite simple: a man sitting down and observing a plant. But the poem is actually quite rich and complex, and it's meaning has been debated since it was first published in the late 19th century. There seems to be a general consensus, however, that the speaker of this poem is suffering. There is an overwhelming mood and atmosphere of grief in this work. Part of what creates this mood is the plain language and direct tone of the work. The language feels incredibly pared-down—Rossetti only uses words that are absolutely necessary.
As the About section of this guide details, many people believe that Rossetti wrote this poem around the year 1858, but it wasn't published until 1870. "The Woodspurge" stands apart from Rossetti's other work because of its simple language: it is incredibly direct and succinct. There are no metaphors or similes in the poem and there is little figurative language. The first three stanzas are focused solely on the outside world rather than the interior world of the speaker. This might seem like a strange decision for a poem about grief, but Rossetti masterfully paints the picture of emotional pain while never entering the speaker's interior world. This leaves a gaping hole in the poem where the speaker should be—more on that later.
"The Woodspurge" starts at a moment of stopping: the first line tells us that the wind has stopped blowing. We start at a large scale—the wind over the countryside—in the first two lines, and then we see the speaker. He is doing something that might seem strange to us at first: moving when the wind moves, and stopping when the wind stops. From this first stanza, we learn vital information about the speaker: he is very passive and despondent. It seems like he is not in charge. This holds true for the rest of the poem.
Evidently, the natural world has a very important presence in this poem. The speaker walks aimlessly with the wind; he stops when it stops. In this way, the wind seems to be more active and aware than the speaker himself is. Take a closer look at the second and third lines of the stanza: "Shaken out dead from tree and hill: / I had walk'd on at the wind's will" (2-3). While presumably it is the leaves of the trees that are "shaken out," the colon that connects the third line to the second line of Stanza 1 suggests that the speaker, too, is part of the "dead" debris that is "shaken" about by the wind. In this way, the first stanza tells us that the speaker is despondent and in a dark place. We already know that this poem is not going to be a carefree and happy one.
In Stanza 2, the speaker describes his experience once he is sitting. Take a look at the way the speaker describes his grief in these lines—you might notice that it is surprisingly empty of emotions or affect. Instead, the speaker pays close attention to different parts of his body and how they are interacting with the physical world at that moment. He reduces himself to his parts—his forehead, his lips, his hair, and his ears—and they seem to have more agency or power in the poem than the speaker himself. For example, the speaker simply notices his forehead between his knees in line 5, rather than putting his forehead there himself. Similarly, it is almost as if his lips make the decision not to say "Alas" in line 6 rather than the speaker making that decision himself. The speaker is completely passive to the world even though his boy parts must interact with it because they have no choice. Also, note the physical position of the speaker's body in this scene. He is curled around his midsection as if he were in the fetal position. This body posture is universally one of extreme distress. In any language, we know what putting one's head between one's knees means. In all of these ways, Rossetti is able to describe a period of intense anguish that the reader immediately picks up on without describing those emotions themselves.
The visual scale goes from large to small over the course of the poem. We start, in Stanza 1, with a large scale view of the landscape surrounding the speaker. In Stanza 2, we are in the speaker's own body; and in Stanza 3, we are seeing what the speaker sees while he is crouched on the ground. He makes sure to notify us that his eyes are "wide open"—he sees the ten weeds on the ground in front of him because they are in his line of sight, not because he is looking for them (9). His eyes settle on the woodspurge in the shade, and he notes that it looks like "three cups in one" (12).
There are several theories about why Rossetti chose the woodspurge as the plant that the speaker focuses on. The woodspurge is a weed that is native to Europe and Turkey. It is thought of as a weed, and it is generally unwanted for gardens because it takes up a lot of ground space. It grows quickly using rhizomes under the ground. Catherine Maxwell suggests in her essay "'Devious Symbols': Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Purgatorio" that Rossetti was inspired by a herbology textbook called Herball by Gerard, published in 1597. This book details the woodspurge's medicinal "vertues." In this way, she understands the woodspurge in Rossetti's poem to have a symbolic medicinal quality that helps "purge" the speaker of his grief. Other readers suggest that the insistence on the number three (the woodspurge is mentioned three times in the poem if you include the title, and the speaker notes twice that there are three cups in one on the plant) points towards Christian symbolism. As St. Patrick preached, the Holy Trinity is one being made up of three parts, like the three-leaf clover and, it turns out, like the woodspurge. Turn to the "Symbols, Allegory, and Motifs" section of this guide for a more detailed discussion of the symbolism of the woodspurge. Additionally, turn to the section of this guide called "What is a Woodspurge?" for a more detailed look at what this plant is and its medicinal qualities.
In the final stanza, the speaker reveals to us his emotional state, though this "perfect grief" hardly comes as a surprise (13). Rossetti's choice of the word "grief" to sum up what we have read so far is an example of the sparse and powerful language in this poem. Grief is an emotional state that is often caused by something out of our control. Much in the same way that the speaker is not fully in control and lets the natural world act upon him, the factors leading to his grief do not seem to be something that he can change. The connotations that come with a word like "grief" are deep, intense loss, particularly loss following death. At this moment, the reader understands why the speaker is so absent and despondent—he cannot be active while he is also experiencing this grief, which overshadows "wisdom" and even "memory" (14). Scholar Ross Clark sums it up well: "the final stanza . . . [drops] all indirection and makes a couple of simple declarations, namely, that we do not necessarily gain wisdom from the experience of perfect grief; we may not even be able to recall it distinctly, but some associated trivial observation or sensory response will remain with us." For the speaker, that "trivial observation" is the woodspurge.
Finally, let's take a quick look at the poem's form. "The Woodspurge" has four stanzas with four lines each. The rhyme scheme is AAAA, meaning that each line in a stanza rhymes with each other. See, for example, the rhyme in Stanza 1:
"The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walk'd on at the wind's will,—
I sat now, for the wind was still" (1-4).
Different stanzas have different rhyme schemes. The poem as a whole is highly visual and symmetric: it can be folded in half on top of itself vertically and horizontally. The meter is iambic tetrameter, meaning that there are four pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables. It sounds like bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum. See, for example, line 2: "Shaken out dead from tree and hill."
