Like the
The climactic position of the
helpful daughter” in the first sonnet define the benevolence implied in the final image (lines 13-14). Recalling the trope of drinking Lethe's water of oblivion, DGR subtlely but certainly alters it: line 14 represents a gift-giving ceremony, and line 13 speaks not of forgetfulness but of awareness.
The octave of the second sonnet acknowledges but also questions the first
sonnet's final benevolent figures. The sestet then puts the question to that
questioning. The implication of the sestet appears to be an imagining of
Death not as a terminus to the dynamics of living but as an integral part of
those dynamics. In making this imaginative proposal DGR is of course drawing
on the mythological resources of a Christian economy, as he does in all of
his work. But it is important to recognize that he recovers those resources
in an aesthetic mode. DGR imagines the figures of Love, Song, and Art
undergoing a kind of
Thus the “meaning
” of the final line,
transparent in a Christian economy, here turns deeply
mysterious—some would say (and have said), turns meaningless, as
if DGR were simply recapitulating formulary terms and ideas. But a less
orthodox reader would argue that DGR's treatment represents an act of
“saving the appearances
”. Blake
called it keeping the divine vision in a time of trouble. DGR's
“faith
” here, if such it can be called,
is at once decorative and dessicated, for he is aware that the Christian
mythos, like his own works, survive only as “cold
commemorative
” things (
dead deathless” hours, becomes a type of dark faithfulness: as if DGR drew life out of death precisely by acknowledging that it cannot be done, and therefore must be undertaken.
It has long been believed that DGR wrote these two sonnets around 19 December
1868 (because of WMR's diary for 19 December 1868 where he says that DGR had
just written a sonnet on death, which was assumed to be one of this pair
(see WMR, Preraphaelite Diaries and Letters
The sonnet on death mentioned by WMR in his diary seems not to have been any
of the sixteen that he initially published in the
Corrected copies of the two sonnets are also gathered in the Fitzwilliam
composite
Neither of the sonnets' texts were substantively changed in any of their various printings.
First printed as (the concluding) Sonnets XV-XVI in the initial
Line 11 of the first sonnet of the pair calls attention to the way DGR repeatedly treats his own life as if it were a myth to be mined for imaginative details. Here the birth of the poet's stillborn daughter is (once again) recalled (see
The House of Life
DGR as Designer and Writer.
milky eyes” appears to be an equally oblique reference to the infant Jesus as the Prince of Peace; see