The Blessed Damozel

In responding to this poem, consider the speakers and situation. Also consider BOTH the religious and sensual elements in it.
I have included the painting (also by Rossetti) here, so you can, if you wish, relate it to the poem:

“The Blessed Damozel” is a woman who was died. She is in the heavens longing for her lover who still lives and missed her as well. At times she leans over in the sky to watch him, and he swears he feels her hair on his face, “Surely she leaned o’er me- her hair//Fell all about my face….//Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.” Later she spoke out and he thought he heard her, “She spoke through the still weather//…. Ah, sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song, Strove not her accents there” She cannot understand why he cannot come to heaven with her, though it seems that the only reason to me is that he isn’t dead yet. Both of them prayed. She seemed to have no question of his acceptance, but her lover worried that God would not take him to unite with her. The only thing he saw in common between himself and her was his love for her. “But shall God lift//to endless unity//The soul whose likeness with the soul//Was but its love for thee?” At the end though, after she says what she shall do when he joined her, he says he can see her smile and heard her weeping. Perhaps he’s dying?