Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: True Woman. I. Herself
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880
Type of Manuscript: corrected fair copy
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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- To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
- A bodily beauty more acceptable
- Than the wild rose-tree's arch es above that crowns the fell;
- To be an essence more environing
- Than wine's quaffed juice; a strain more ravishing
- Than the impassionate pulse of Philomel;—
- To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
- That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!
- How strange a thing to be what m Man can know
- 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
- Hides her soul's purest depth & loveliest glow;
- Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
- The wave-bowered pearl,—the Springtime's heart-shaped seal of green
- That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
3-1881a.princems.rad.xml
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