The Burden of Nineveh (revised manuscript fragment, facsimile) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 By permission of the Special Collections Library, Duke University <author>Dante Gabriel Rossetti</author> <msprod> <date compdate="1850">1850</date> <type>corrected copy</type> <assign/> <collation>2 pages</collation> <note/> </msprod> <scribe>DGR</scribe> <corrector/> <provenance> <location>unknown</location> <recnum/> <note/> </provenance> <physicaldesc> <binding> <cover/> <endpapers/> </binding> <typography> <typeface> <point/> <font/> </typeface> <pagelines> <number/> <length/> </pagelines> <columns/> <margin type="top"/> <margin type="bottom"/> <margin type="right"/> <margin type="left"/> <note/> </typography> <paper/> <watermark/> <size/> <note/> </physicaldesc> </citnstruct> </sourcedesc> </filedesc> <encodingdesc/> <profiledesc> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>These stanzas were published in facsimile by <xref doc="a.nd497.r8.m33.rad" from="221">Marillier</xref>. They represent a portion of DGR's early corrected manuscript of the poem (the present location of which is not known). Marillier said that Fairfax Murray showed him the manuscript and he added the following comment: “These are, first, a couple of verses, numbers 5 and 6, from the earliest original draft of ‘The Burden of Nineveh’, begun about 1850, and first printed in the <xref doc="a.ap4.o93.raw"> <title level="per"> <hi rend="i">Oxford and Cambridge Magazine</hi> in 1856 (pp. 771-775). The second specimen is from verse 7 of the same poem, a later interpolation on the opposite page of the manuscript book—or the blank portion of the same page, I forget which. The difference between the two styles is quite perceptible, and if the earlier portion dates from about 1850, the interpolated verse would belong to some succeeding year not later than 1856.” The interpolated stanza would have been scripted on the facing page of the manuscript, if DGR followed his usual transcription practice.

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception History

Iconographic

Printing History

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

5 Stanza number The The sun waxed fully present. Blue And huge, the beast its shadow threw. No shade that plague of darkness knew, No light, no shade, while older grew By ages the old earth and sea. How much Heaven's thunder,—how much else Man's puny roar,—what cry of shells Cleft amid leaguered citadels, How many lordships loud with bells, Heardst thou in secret Nineveh? On the grey stones the shape lay scor'd. That day when, nigh the gates, the Lord Shelter'd h His Jonah with a gourd, This sun, (I said) that here present, pour'd Even thus this shadow that I see. This shadow has been shed the same From sun and moon,—from lamps which came For worship,—from those days in flame, That searched into a shrivelled name Sardanapalus' Nineveh. Within this shadow, haply, knelt once Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons Did smite him twixt the altar-stones; Thou peradventure heard his groans For his god Nisroch thou may'st be Ah! and what men else have asked thine aid In years of old, till neath thy shade Within those trenches he had made Last year the Christian knelt & prayed In thy reconquered Nineveh.