Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, proof for cancel leaf)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1881 August 3
Publisher: F. S. Ellis
Printer: Chiswick Press, C. Whittingham and Co.
Issue: 5

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

Image of page 185 page: 185
Manuscript Addition: 5d
Editorial Description: Printer's proof number added in upper left.
Manuscript Addition: Cancel Send copy to Mr Rossetti
Editorial Description: Printer's note at top of the page
SONNET XXIII.



LOVE'S BAUBLES.
  • I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
  • Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
  • And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
  • Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
  • And from one hand the petal and the core
  • Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
  • Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
  • Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
  • At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
  • 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
  • And as I took them, at her touch they shone
  • With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
  • And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
  • Follies of love are love's true ministers.”
Image of page 186 page: 186
SONNET XXIV.



PRIDE OF YOUTH.
  • Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
  • The dead, but little in his heart can find,
  • Since without need of thought to his clear mind
  • Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
  • Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
  • Along his eddying wings plumes the auroral wind,
  • Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
  • Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
  • There is a change in every hour's recall,
  • 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
  • On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
  • Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
  • The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
  • Even as the beads of a told rosary!
Electronic Archive Edition: 1