Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: [Verses to Robert Browning]
Author: DGR
Date of Composition: 1850 April
Type of Manuscript: verse letter
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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- Was this well done, thou Robert Browning?
- —Me also, prayer for the one candle
- Burnt at thy shrine—to set me frowning?
- Me, swinger of the myrrh & sandal
- Before thee, as For thy nose, as for nose of Providence,
- Who for thy sake dreamed not a gibe ill
- At any verse in the Holy Bible;
- Who said—Take Virgil & take Ovid hence
- Off Hesiod—let old Melesigines
- 10 Be off poste haste on his yellow ridgy Creak down at once on his yellow ridgy knees
- Who'd ask, if you showed fight for Dante
- If it was earnest or a blague you meant
- And cursorily in course of argument
- Had brought to mind a man named managed to remember Shakespeare
- —Who, Robert, in thy cause would break spear
- With Christian Muslem or Ashantee
- Who to any old book on any bookstall
- Which, opened, turned out to be not a tome
- Of thine, would say, as to the cook’s call
- 20From the area, that her master’s not at h[ome]
- “Thank you, I'm sorry to have troubled [you]”
- From their spoil giving thee thy double [due]
- And for the books, in this day [fashionable]
- [Did?] Dickens, Tennyson, & Thackeray
- (Wishing to swear curse but not for passion able)
- Lest rend vamp their crockery & crackery
- Or kick the bucket like Alnaschar;
- Me who in faith (theme then abhorred)
- Turning an inkling of Though with a leaning towards the Lascar,
- 30Would have girded my loins upon thy warrant
- And having hugged Ali hard & kist Yan,
- [With?] Taken up staff & cudgels for Mahomet;
- And at least felt sure (touching the Christian)
- That bread which Ezra & which Nahum ate
- ( Brought Fetched to them, wasn't it by raven,
- Grovelled prone in the trough of the desert
- At high noon when the sand is hottest
- Seething & writhing at their protest,—
- As they were painted by Simon Griesseart
- 40Gold saucers round their each numskull s shaven
- Tell me that that bread & the other bread
- Broken elsewhere for bond & brotherhead
- (For such, quoth I, is of the prophets)
- Was the devil's—just a baking of Tophets
- For Tophet is ordained of old—
- Yea for the King it is preparèd
- (Is now by Robert, am I told)
- [?] And for all of us from Japhet & Jared
- [?] him & me!—O Robert Browning
- 50[And?] also—me—to set me frowning
- Was this well done, thou Robert Browning?
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Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
31-1850.baylorms.rad.xml