Poems (1870): Exhumation Proofs, First Issue (partial), Princeton/Troxell (copy 2)

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Document Title: Poems (1870): Exhumation Proofs, First Issue (partial), Princeton/Troxell (copy 2)

Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date of publication: 1869 October 30 (late October)

Printer: Strangeways and Walden

Issue: 2

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

page: 0

Editorial Description: Notations made on blank page of ms, not in DGR's penmanship.

page: 1

Sig. B

A LAST CONFESSION.

( Regno Lombardo-Veneto, 1848.)

Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
That they might hate another girl to death
Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
That day in going to meet her,—that last day
For the last time, she said;—of all the love
And all the hopeless hope that she might change
10And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
At places we both knew along the road,
Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
So close they gathered round me—they would all
Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
To plead my cause with her against herself
So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
And only then, if God can pardon me.
20What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

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I passed a village-fair upon my road,
And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
Some little present, which might prove that day
Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
A parting gift. And there I bought the knife. it was I bought
Added TextThe knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
For certain, it must be a parting gift.
And, standing silent now at last, I looked
30Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
Still trying hard to din into my ears
Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
If only it could make me understand.
One moment thus. Another, and her face
Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
So that I thought, if now she were to speak
I could not hear her. Then again I knew
All, as we stood together on the sand
At Iglio, in the first thin shade o'the hills.

40‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
‘Take it,’ I said, ‘and keep it for my sake.’
Her neck did not unbend, nor did her eyes drooped her eyes,
Fall, nor Nor did her foot left leave beating of the sand;
Only she put it by from her and laughed.
Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
But God was there and heard. Father, will God
Pardon me this? Remember all? He heard her when she laughed.

Editorial Description: Line to indicate stanza break drawn by DGR between lines 45 and 46.

Note: Pages 3-4 missing from extant manuscript.

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter written in upper left corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship.

I have been speaking to you of some matters
50There was no need to speak of, have I not?
You do not know how clearly those things stood
Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
Clearest where furthest off.

I told you how
She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
60Where women walked whose painted images
I have seen with candles round them in the C church.
They bent this way and that, one to another,
Playing: and over the long golden hair
Of each there floated like a ring of fire
Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose
Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
As if a window had been opened in heaven
For God to give his blessing from, before
This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
70I thought our world was setting, and the sun
Flared , a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
Then all the blessed maidens who were there
Stood up together, as it were a voice
That called them; and they threw their white throats tresses back,
Making their bosoms all jut out at once,

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And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
80And looking round, I saw as usual
That she was standing there with her long locks
Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

For always when I see her now, she laughs.
And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
The life of this dead terror; as in days
When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
Something of those days yet before the end.

I brought her from the city—one such day
When she was still a merry loving child,—
90The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
A little image of a flying l Love
Made of our coloured glass -ware, in his hands
A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
And why the arrow. What I knew I told
Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
And when she heard that he could rule the loves
Of men and women, still she shook her head
100And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
Fronting her little bed; and then again

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Manuscript Addition: a b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letters hand-written in upper-left corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship.

She needs must fix him there herself, because
I gave him to her and she loved him so,
And he should make her love me better yet,
If women loved the more, the more they grew.
But the fit place upon the wall was high
For her, and so I held her in my arms:
110And each time that the heavy pruning -hook
I gave her for a hammer slipped away
As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
Just as she hung the image on the nail,
It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
120‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

Another later thing comes back to me .
'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
Above the splash of blood, old M i etternich
130(May his soul die, and never-dying worms
Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month

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Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
The first I heard of it was a chance shot
Here and there in the street, and on the stones
A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
140Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

For now, being always with her, the first love
I had—the father's — , brother's love—was changed,
I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
150Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
The first time I perceived this, I remember,
Was once when after hunting I came home
Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
And sat down at my feet upon the floor
Leaning against my side. But when I felt
Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
So high as to be laid upon my heart,
I turned and looked upon my darling there
And marked for the first time how tall she was;
160And my heart beat with so much violence
Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship.

Manuscript Addition: In order

Editorial Description: Notation along right hand side of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
And when, remembering all and counting back
The time s , I made out thirteen fourteen years for her
And told her so, she gazed into my face,
And bent her body back like a bent bow,
And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
170And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
Like folded lilies deepest deepset in the stream.

Printer's Direction: one word

Editorial Description: In right hand margin, next to “under lip” in line 176.

Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
Her image, Father, does not bring is not like the sights
Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
under lip
Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
180And the hair's shadow made it paler still , :—

Added Text

Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud

Where the moon dwells in eddying waves of glo

Transcription Gap: at least two letters (image trunc)

Where the moon gazes, Where the moon's gaze is shrined in eddying gloom.

Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
Its pride of flower s and fruit, her high neck bore
That face made wonderful with night and day.
Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
She had, that clung a little where they touched
190And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak ,

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Had also in them hidden springs of mirth ,
Which under the dark lashes evermore
Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
Between the water and the willow-leaves,
And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

I was a moody comrade to her then,
For all the love I bore her. Italy,
200The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
To lop th y e poisonous thicket from her path,
Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
Had yielded his. And this had come to be
A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
To wreak, all things together that a man
Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
210All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
To see such life pass muster and be deemed
Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
And though she ruled me always, I remember
That once when I was thus and she still kept
Leaping about the place and laughing, I
Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
And putting her two hands into my breast
220Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
'Tis long since I have wept for anything.

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

I thought that song forgotten out of mind,
And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
Holding the platter, when the children run
To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

Printer's Direction: make equal

Editorial Description: Notation attached to first two lines of Italian song, to eliminate the indentation of the song's first line.

La bella donna*
Piangendo disse:
230‘Come son fisse
Le stelle in cielo!

Transcribed Footnote (page 11):

Note: Pagenote formatted in two columns at bottom of page.

* She wept, sweet lady,
And said in weeping:
‘What spell is keeping
The stars so steady?
Why does the power
Of the sun's noon-hour
To sleep so move me?
And the moon in heaven,
Stained where she passes
10 As a worn-out glass is,—
Wearily driven,
Why walks she above me?

‘Stars, moon, and sun too,
I'm tired of either
And all together!
Whom speak they unto
That I should listen?
For very surely,
Though my arms and shoulders
20 Dazzle beholders,
And my eyes glisten,
All's nothing purely!
What are words said for
At all about them,
If he they are made for
Can do without them ! ?’

She laughed, sweet lady,
And said in laughing:
‘His hand clings half in
30 Mine My own already!
Oh! do you love me?
Oh! speak of passion
In no new fashion,
No loud inveighings,
But the old sayings
You once said of me.

‘You said , ‘ : “As summer,
Through boughs grown brittle,
Comes back a little
40 Ere frosts benumb her,—
So bring'st thou to me
All leaves and flowers,
Though autumn's gloomy
To-day in the bowers. ’ ”

‘Oh! does he love me,
When my voice teaches
The very speeches
He then spoke of me?
Alas! what flavour
50 Still with me lingers?’
(But she laughed as my kisses
Glowed in her fingers
With love's old blisses.)
‘Oh! where's one favour
Left me to woo him,
Whose whole poor savour
Belongs not to him?’

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Quel fiato anelo
Dello stanco sole,
Quanto m'assonna!
E la luna, macchiata
Come uno specchio
Logoro e vecchio,—
Faccia affannata.
Ch è e cosa vuole?

240‘Ch e è stelle, luna, e sole,
Ciascun m'annoja
E m'annojano insieme;
Non me ne preme
Nè ci prendo gioja.
E veramente,
Che le spalle sien franche
E le braccia bianche
E il seno caldo e tondo,
Non mi fa niente.
250Chè cosa al mondo
Posso più far di questi
Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’

La donna rise
E riprese ridendo:—
‘Questa mano che prendo
E dunque mia?
Tu m'ami dunque?
Dimmelo ancora,
Non in modo qualunque,
260Ma le parole
Belle e precise
Che dicesti pria.

‘ Siccome suole
La state talora

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(Dicesti) un qualche istante
Tornare innanzi inverno,
Così ta fai ch'io scerno
Le foglie tutte quante ,
Ben ch'io certo tenessi
270 Per passato l'autunno.

‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
Io debbo insegnargli
Quei cari detti istessi
Ch'ei mi disse una volta!
Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
(Ma ridea piano piano
Dei baci in sulla mano,)
‘Ch'ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’

That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
280To listen, and such words still left to say!
Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
As on the very day she sang to knelt by sang to me;
When Which When , having sung, done, she took out of my hand
Something that I had played with all the while
And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.

But these are foolish tales. How should I show
The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
290More and more brightly?—when for long years now
The very flame that flew about the heart,
And gave it fiery wings, has come to be

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The lapping blaze of hell's environment
Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
Dread firstlings of the brood that re a nd it now.
It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
300If home we had: and in the Duomo there
I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
An Image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
In marble by some great Italian hand
In the great days when she and Italy
Sat on one throne together: and to her ,
And to none else , my darling told child would tell loved one told her heart.
She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
310(Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
Made manifest herself in womanhood.
Father, the day I speak of was the first
For weeks that I had borne her company
Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
O r f some impenetrable restlessness
Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
And as we entered there that day, I bent
My eyes on the fair Image, and I said ,
320Within my heart, ‘Oh warm turn her heart to me!’

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And so I left her to her prayers, and went
To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
Where in the sacristy the day light still falls
Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
Its hale The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
But coming back, I wondered when I saw
That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
Alone without her; until further off,
330Before some fresh new Madonna newly gaily decked,
Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
She rose, and side by side we left the church.
I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
‘She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
Then silent to the soul I held my way:
340And from the fountains of the public place
Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
And hands held light before her; and the face
Which long had made a day in my life's night
Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
Beyond my heart to the world made for her.

Printer's Direction: too much space

Editorial Description: Notation by DGR, between “laugh's” and “subsiding” in line 344.

page: 16

Note: Page has negative impression of ink from facing page. Text blurred.

Editorial Description: Paragraph indentation symbol, attached by DGR to the beginning of line 351.

350Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
With his white face, only the two were red
As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
White for a livery, that the blood may show
Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.

360Give me a draught of water in that cup;
My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
But you must hear. If you mistake my words
And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
370'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.

You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
Beginning, I have come to the same point
And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
Which will not let you understand my tale.

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

Sig. C

It is that then we have her with us here,
As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
To-night, till all the darkness re c eked of it.
380Her hair is always wet; for she has kept
Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
And when she wrung them round over the floor,
I heard the blood hiss through her fingers; so
That I sat straight up in my bed and screamed
Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
Look that you turn not now; she's at your back:
Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
390The sand is black and red. The black was black
When what was split spilt that day sank into it,
And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
How shall I make you know? You have not known
The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
400How the change happened between her and me.
Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
When most my heart was full of her; and still

page: 18
In every corner of myself I sought
To find what service failed her; and no less
Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
For one first year of all eternity
All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
And then when most your soul is blent with it
410And all yields song together,—then it stands
O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
‘God! what is left but hell for company,
But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
420Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
Even so I stood the day her empty heart
Left her place empty in our home, while yet
I knew not why she went nor where she went
Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
When to my prayers at last one sight of her
Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
430Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet

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Manuscript Addition: a

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
Your broken love!

My Father, I forgot it was is hard
To tell you of one thing on the last things of that last day;
And But I must tell you all now. While I stopped
To buy the dagger at the village fair,
I saw two cursed rats about the place
440I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
Was not yet over; for three hours to come
I prized my life: and so I looked around
For safety. A poor painted mountebank
Was playing pranks and shouting in a crowd.
I knew he must have heard my name, so I
Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
And brought me out next minute with my face
450All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
And there I handed him his cups and balls
And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds ,
Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
A woman laughed above me. I looked around up
And saw her—a brown, handsome harlot—leaning
Half through a tavern window thick with vine.

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Some man had come behind her in the room,
460And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
With that coarse empty laugh. I saw him there
Munching her neck with kisses, while the vine
Crawled in her back.

And three hours afterwards,
When she that I had run all risks to meet
Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
(I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
470Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
When I had offered her the little knife,
And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

Deleted Text

‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
And keep it for my sake;’ and in her heart
I plunged the blade, and with her blood my hand
Was burnt; and like some wine of hell, her blood
Rushed to my brain, and as in fire my soul
480Swam in it, and it filled the sun and sea
With one red blindness. So she took the knife, —
Took it, not laughing as I bade her then,—
And fell, and her stiff boddice scooped the sand
Into her bosom.

page: 21

Note: Last stanza on page 20 entirely stricken by DGR. Replaced with first stanza on page 21.

Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

Added Text

“Take it,” I said to her the second time,
“And keep it for my sake.”
“Take it and keep it.” And then came a fire
That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
480Within the whirling brain's entanglement
That she or I or all things bled to death.
And then I found her lying at my feet
And knew that I had stabbed her, and still saw
The look she gave me when she took the knife
Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
And fell, and her stiff boddice scooped the sand
Into her bosom.

And she keeps it, see—
Do you not see she keeps it? There beneath
Wet fingers and wet tresses—in her heart!
490For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
A dagger as our women of the coast
Twist in their garters.

Father, I have done—
And from her side now she unwinds the thick
Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.
Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
I have told all. Tell me at once what hope
Can reach me still; for now she draws it out
500Slowly, and only smiles as yet. Look, Father,
She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.

page: [22]

Note: blank page

page: 23

Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

JENNY.

“Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her,

child!”—( Mrs. Quickly.)

Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
Whose head is on my knee to-night;—
(Have all our dances left it light
With their wild tunes?)—Ah, Jenny, queen
Of kisses which the blush between
Could hardly make much daintier!—Nay,
Poor flower left torn since yesterday
Until to-morrow leave you bare;
10Poor handful of bright spring-water
Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face!—
Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
Thus with your head upon my knee;—
Whose look, whose voice, person or whose purse may be
The lodestar of your reverie?

This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
A change from mine so full of books,
Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
So many captive hours of youth,—

page: 24
20The hours they thieve from day and night
To make one's cherished work come right,
And leave it wrong for all their theft,
Even as to-night my work was left:
Until I vowed that since my brain
And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
My feet should have some dancing too:—
And thus it was I met with you.
Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
30You seem too tired to get to bed.

It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were not scarce so strange
No long time since. Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.

The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
The cloud that made the books so swim
At every effort's interim.
40Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
For all your wealth of loosened hair,
Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
And warm sweets open to the waist,
All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
You know not what a book you seem,
Half-read by lightning in a dream!

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
And I should be ashamed to say:—
Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
50But while my thought runs on like this
With wasteful whims more than enough,
I wonder what you're thinking of.

If of myself you think at all,
What is the thought?—conjectural
On sorry matters best unsolved?—
Or inly is each grace revolved
To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
60And let you rest upon my knee.

For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
You're thankful for a little rest,—
Glad from the crush to rest within,
From the heart-sickness and the din
When Where envy's voice , at virtue's pitch
Mocks you because your gown is rich;
And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
70And other nights than yours bespeak;
And from the wild wise unchildish elf,
To schoolmate lesser than himself
Pointing you out, what thing you are:—

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Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
From shame and shame's outbraving too,
Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
But most from the hatefulness of man
Who spares not to end what he began,
Whose acts are foul and his speech hard,
80Who, having used you, afterward
Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
I serve the dishes and the wine.

Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
And do not let me think of you,
Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
Your head there, so you do not sleep;
But that the weariness may pass
90And leave you merry, take this glass.
Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

Behold the lilies of the field,
They toil not neither do they spin;
(So doth the ancient text begin,—
Not of such rest as one of these
Can share.) Another rest and ease
Along each summer-sated path
100From its new lord the garden hath,

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Manuscript Addition: a

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter (originally “b”, altered to “a”) hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's hand.

Than that whose spring in blessings ran
Which praised the righteous husbandman,
Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
The lilies sickened unto death.

What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
Like winter on the garden-bed.
But you had roses left in May,—
They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
110But must your roses die away?
Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
Still red as from the broken heart,
And here's the naked stem of thorns.

Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
As yet of winter. Sickness here
Or want alone could waken fear,—
Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
Except when there may rise unsought
Haply at times a passing thought
120Of the old days which seem to be
Much older than any history
That is written in any book;
When she would lie in fields and look
Along the ground through the thick grass,
And wonder where the city was,
Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
They told her then for a child's tale.

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Jenny, you know the city now — .
A child can tell the tale there, how
130Some things, which are not yet enroll'd
In market-lists, are bought and sold
Even till the early Sunday light,
When Saturday night is market-night
Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
And market-night in the Haymarket.
Our learned London children know,
Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
Have seen your lifted silken skirt
Advertize dainties through the dirt;
140Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
On virtue; and have learned your look
When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
Along the streets alone, and there,
Round the long park, across the bridge , ;
The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
Wind on together and apart,
A fiery serpent for your heart.

Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
Suppose I were to think aloud,—
150What if to her all this were said?
Why, as a volume seldom read
Being opened halfway shuts again,
So might the pages of her brain
Be parted at such words, and thence
Close back upon the dusty sense.

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Manuscript Addition: b

Editorial Description: Lower-case letter hand-written in upper left-hand corner of page. Not in DGR's penmanship

For is there hue or shape defin'd
In Jenny's desecrated mind,
Where all contagious currents meet,
A Lethe of the middle street?
160Nay, it reflects not any face,
Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
But as they coil those eddies clot,
And night and day remember not.

What Jenny, fast asleep? . . . . How fair,
Added TextWhy, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
Added TextAsleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
Added TextSo young and soft and tired; so fair
With chin nestled in her hair,
Added TextWith chin thus nestled in your hair,
Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
As if some sky of dreams shone through!