Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Transfigured Life (fair copy, Library of Congress): Rossetti Archive Document
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1873
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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- As growth of form or momentary glance
- In a child's features will recall to mind
- The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
- Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
- And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
- The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
- Till in the blended likeness now we find
- A separate man's or woman's countenance:—
- So in the Song, the Singer's Joy and Pain,
- 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
- To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
- By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
- And from that Song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
- There comes the sound as of abundant rain.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
2-1873.lc.rad.xml
Copyright: Reproduced with permission of the Library of Congress.