Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: After the German Subjugation of France (British Library fair copy)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1871
Type of Manuscript: fair copy
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female
angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed
the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS
JAMES WISE
HIS BOOK
JAMES WISE
HIS BOOK
- BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
- WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
- SOLACE OF SOLITUDE—
- BONDS OF SOCIETY!
![Image of page [1]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/30-1871.blms.2.jpg)
Note: The cancelled variants for lines 11-12 are written at the lower left
corner of the page
- Lo! the twelfth year,—the wedding-feast come round
- With years for months,—and lo! the babe new-born;
- Out of the womb's rank furnace, cast forlorn
- And with contagious effluence seamed and crown'd.
- To hail this birth, what fiery tongues surround
- Hell's Pentecost,—what clamour of all cries
- That swell, from Absalom's scoff to Shimei's,
- One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!
- For now the harlot's heart on a new sleeve
- 10Is prankt; and her heart's lord of yesterday
- (Spurned from her bed, whose purple gauds worm-spun silks o'erlay
- Such fretwork as the busy that other worm can weave,)
- Takes in his ears the vanished world's last yell,
- And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell.
- whose eyes that yet shall grieve
- This hour exult to watch his babe at play
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
30-1871.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library