The Steel's Temper that is Cold

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Document Title: The Steel's Temper that is Cold

Author: William Michael Rossetti

Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date of Composition: 1848

Type of Manuscript: fair copy corrected

Scribe: DGR

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

page: [1r]

Manuscript Addition: (8 m.)

Editorial Description: Notation at lower right indicating it was written in eight minutes.

24. The Steel's Temper that is cold.

Her glances rested on me with a show
Of kindness and complacence, but too cool
And compassed; 'twas as if the the line and rule
Had marked: “Thus far, no farther shalt thou go.”
A feeling came on me that once was some little woe
But now was more of pity; for I felt how dull
And hollow are the precepts of that school
Which exiles gibbets love and hate and makes a row
Of poor half-passions virtue. With a In her laugh
10 (A laugh how forced) she asked me then for There was an aching jingle; & for whom
Those sweet flowers were she saw within my This laugh was meant she herself knew not; hand
She knew it! that laugh was the Was calmly ? crossed with hand: an epitaph
Of all my passion:—there within its Her smooth words seemed writ on the whited tomb
It lies which falseness made and falseness We wot of: & her love was mapped and planned.

W.M.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1

Source File: 33-1848.dukems.rad.xml