Ballad of the Lonely Lovers
We're just going to lay it out for you, Shmoopers: "The Blessed Damozel" is written in regular sestets, sticking close to the traditional ballad meter's alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter. Oh, and did we mention that it has a regular rhyme scheme of ABCBDB?
Did you get all that? Well, don't worry if you didn't. We wouldn't leave you hanging like that.
Let's just start off with the poem's stanzas. Each one has six lines (go ahead and count if you don't believe us), which makes these all "sestets" or "sextets"—the technical term for a six-line stanza.
What's going on in those stanzas, form-wise anyway, is pretty regular too. Each line's rhythm is determined in an alternating fashion. The odd-numbered lines of each stanza (first, third, fifth, etc.) follow pretty close to a pattern called "iambic tetrameter." That means that each line contains four ("tetra-" means four) iambs, which are two-syllable pairs in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed. (The word "allow" is an iamb, giving us the rhythm of daDUM.)
The even-numbered lines, on the other hand, follow a pattern of iambic trimeter. This is just like iambic tetrameter, only there are three iambs in these lines instead of four ("tri-" meaning three). As a result, you get a pattern of four iambs in a line, then three, then four, then three again. Check out an example:
It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on:
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun. (25-30)
You should hear iambic tetrameter (daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, daDUM) pretty clearly the first, third, and fifth lines of this stanza, with iambic trimeter (daDUM, daDUM, daDUM) in the second, fourth, and sixth lines.
As well, you should have noticed that the even-numbered lines are linked by a shared end rhyme. "On" rhymes with "begun" and "sun"—pretty much anyway, particularly if you read this in a British accent. This rhyming pattern can be written ABCBDB, where each letter represents that line's end rhyme.
Put it all together, Shmoopers, and you have the metrical pattern of the ballad—a very old poetic form that came about in part as a way to make things easier to memorize for people who couldn't read or write. That's definitely not something that Rossetti's worried about here. In fact, there are several instances in the poem where he throws in an extra syllable or two. In general, though, the ballad is the form he sticks to, likely turning to this old form of poetry as a tip of the artistic cap to the classics. (Check out "In a Nutshell" for more on his interests in the classic arts.)
At the same time, the sheer length of "The Blessed Damozel"—with its repeating rhymes and meters—helps to reinforce one of the central problems of the poem: the problem of infinity. Our damsel is facing, well, eternity up in heaven. That may sound great, but it's definitely not cool with her if she doesn't get to spend it with her lover, who remains stuck back on Earth. What if he never gets to heaven?
As far as her fella goes, he's spending his days back on Earth hearing her voice in bird songs and thinking about her when bells toll. Grief is rough stuff, gang. It can make time seem like it's passing sloooowly. The poem's methodical rhythm and rhyme scheme give us that idea.