Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The Trees of the Garden (Rosenbach 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]
Manuscript Addition: Sonnet LXXXIX
The Trees of the Garden
  • Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; & we
  • Whom trees that knew our 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 irrevocable[?] 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 upheaved forest-trees mossgrown today
  • Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
  • Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
  • Those stars, that through his spray-crown leaflets watch the oak,
  • When even his gnarled boughs shrink shall hold their way.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: By permission of The Rosenbach Library