Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The Trees of the Garden (British Library fair copy)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1875?
Type of Manuscript: fair copy
Scribe: DGR

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

Image of page [1r] page: [1r]
The Trees of the Garden


  • Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
  • Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
  • And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
  • A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
  • Of some inexorable supremacy
  • Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
  • From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
  • Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
  • Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
  • 10 The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
  • Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
  • Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
  • Those stars, that through his spray-crown watch the oak
  • When even his gnarled boughs shrink, shall hold their way.
         D. G. Rossetti
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 2-1875.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library