Mater Pulchrae Delectionis (fair copy fragment, Duke U. Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 Digital images used with permission of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Mater Pulchrae Delectionis Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1847 fair copy MS DGR Duke University Library lined sheet, 6 3/8 x 8 1/8 inches Commentary
Introduction

This is an early fragmentary fair copy of the poem. Though now a loose sheet, it was originally part of a notebook. Later, when DGR was putting together works to be included in his 1870 <hi rend="i">Poems</hi> , he revised the poem drastically into a new work titled “Ave” .

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception History

Iconographic

Printing History

This poem was not printed until WMR included it in the Notes section of his collected 1911 edition (pages 661-662).

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Baum, Manuscripts in the Duke University Library , 26-33.

Songs of the Art Catholic.<lb/> <ornlb>-----</ornlb> <lb/> 2<lb/> “Mater Pulchrae Delectionis.” Mother of the fair Delight, From the azure standing white And looking golden in the light;— With the shadow of the Heaven-roof Upon thy hands lifted aloof And a mystic quiet in thine eyes Born of the hush of Paradise, Seated beside the Ancient Three, Thyself a woman-Trinity— Being the dear daughter of God, Mother of Christ, from stall to rood, And wife unto the Holy Ghost;— Oh when our need is uttermost And the sorrow we have seemeth to last,— Though the future falls not to the past In the race that the Great Cycle runs, An Epitaph for Keats.* ----- Through one, years since hanged and forgot, Who stabbed backs by the Quarter, Here lieth one who—while Time's stream Runneth, as God hath taught her, Bearing man's fame to men,—will have His great name writ in water. -----

* Nowadays, when the Poems of John Keats arein every library, and the Quarterly Review atevery butterman's and fishmonger's, (by the way,it is surprising that these worthy people are notafraid of dirtying their goods by the contact,)my reader is almost sure to remember thatthe young poet, lying worldsick on his deathbed,requested that his epitaph might be:—“Herelies one whose name was writ in water.”

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