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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The End of It (18th June 1815) (holograph fair copy, British Library)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1845
Type of Manuscript: fair copy
Scribe: DGR

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

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Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS

JAMES WISE

HIS BOOK

  • BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
  • WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
  • SOLACE OF SOLITUDE—
  • BONDS OF SOCIETY!
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more about The End of It (18th June 1815)
The End of It.

(18 th June, 1815.)
  • His brows met, and his teeth were set,
  • And his mouth seemed in pain,
  • And madness closed and grappled with him
  • As they turned his bridle-rein.
  • And albeit his eyes went everywhere,
  • Yet they saw not anything:
  • And he drew the bit tightly, for he thought
  • That his horse was stumbling.
  • There was a great shouting about him
  • 10And the weight of a great din:
  • But what was the battle he had around
  • To the battle he had within?
  • A pond in motion to the stress of the ocean,
  • A lamp to a furnace-eye,
  • Or the wind's wild weeping-fits
  • To the voice of Austerlitz
  • When it shook upon the sky.
  • Hark, hark, hark! through the spangled dark,
  • To the left and to the right,
  • 20Hark, hark, hark! how the muskets bark
  • Like ban-dogs heard at night.
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    Note: blank page
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  • While the trumpet, all day shrill for blood,
  • Laughs with a cruel heave,
  • Ringing out fame and ringing in shame,—
  • A peal for a New Year's Eve.
  • He turned stared right out, and he turned
  • him about,
  • And he knew that It must fall;
  • He knew the trodden ground for its bier
  • And the cannon-smoke for its pall.
  • 30Spurring he gazed not back, but sped
  • As speedeth the speedy wind
  • When, bound as far as St. Helena,
  • It leaves Waterloo behind.
18th June 1845
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 2-1845.wisebl.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library