Soul's Beauty (Sibylla Palmifera) (fair copy manuscript, Delaware Art Museum)Dante Gabriel Rossetti1Digital images courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R.
Bancroft Collection.Sibylla PalmiferaDante Gabriel Rossetti1867holograph pen and ink fair copyDGRDGRDelaware Art Museum, Bancroft CollectionBought in 1948 from B. F. Stevens and Brown Ltd. for L9.13.3.writing paper, measurements: 18 x 11 cmwatermarked
Commentary
Introduction
The title of the manuscript argues that it is an early copy, probably made
around the time the poem was written in 1867. The variant in line 7
indicates that the text may predate all of the printed texts.
Textual History: Composition
Textual History: Revision
Production History
Reception History
Iconographic
Printing History
Pictorial
Historical
Literary
Translation
Autobiographical
Bibliographic
Sibylla PalmiferaUnder the arch of life, where Love and death,Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I sawBeauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,I drew it in as simply as my breath.Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,Through sea or sky or woman, to one law;The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.This is that Lady Beauty; in whose praiseThy voice and hand shake still,—long known to theeBy flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beatFollowing her daily of thy heart and feet,How passionately and irretrievably,In what fond flight, how many ways and days!