Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Praise and Prayer (cancelled fair copy, Houghton Library, Harvard U.)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1848
Type of Manuscript: fair copy, crossed out
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
Note: Accompanying this document is a typescript letter by Janet Camp Troxell detailing her research
on the provenance of this and other exhumed ms. pages.
![Image of page [1]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/thumbs_small/23-1848.harvardms.1.jpg)
Note: The leaf is mutilated at the top in two places.
Note: The gaps in the first two lines have been editorially supplied (in
brackets). The title is added below and is in WMR's hand. The whole of the
sonnet is crossed through, presumably by DGR.
- Doubt spoke [no wo]rds in me as [there] I kneeled.
- Loathing, I [could] not [p]raise: [I c]ould not thank
- God for the cup of evil that I drank.
- I dared not cry upon His strength to shield
- My soul from weapons which it meant to wield
- Itself against itself. And so I sank
- Into the furnished phrases, smooth & blank
- Which we all learn in childhood; and did yield
- A barren prayer for life. My voice might mix
- 10 With hers, but mingled not. Hers was a full
- Grand burst of music, which the crowned Seven
- Must have leaned sideways from their seats to fix
- In their calm minds. The angels' songs fell dull
- Doubtless, when heard again, throughout all Heaven.
Praise and Prayer
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
23-1848.harvardms.rad.xml