Sunset Wings

Sunset Wings Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1871 August <artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>The poem's most striking images focus on a flock of starlings that DGR noticed during his sojourn at Kelmscott in 1871 with Jane Morris. The flocking patterns made by the birds suggest to DGR the presence of a mysterious signifying agency. But the poem is replete with “wings” that grow more and more ambiguous in their suggested meanings. This ambiguity culminates in the last seven lines, which unfold a studied series of ambivalent signs. In that general context, one notes the arresting character of the third stanza, which climaxes the first half of the poem where non-symbolic detail figures a condition of experiential innocence. When the poem takes its turn to symbolism (“Even thus Hope's hours”, 16) that paradisal spell is broken.</p> <p>The last stanza of Keats's <xref doc="a."> <title level="wrk">“To Autumn” can scarcely not be recalled. That intertext throws into sharp relief the brooding and uncertain finale of DGR's poem.

Textual History: Composition

Composed in August, 1871 when DGR was at Kelmscott with Jane Morris. Five integral manuscripts survive: what seems the first draft, in the library of the Delaware Art Museum; an early copy, sent in a letter to his mother on 18 August 1871; another early copy, possibly the one that DGR included in his letter to William Bell Scott of 13 August 1871 (see Fredeman, <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> 71. 123 ); a fair copy which is included among the miscellaneous poems DGR gathered at the back of the gift book of verses he gave to Mrs. Morris in 1874; another late fair copy, possibly printer's copy for 1881, with a correction.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First printed in the <xref doc="a.ap4.a85.1873a.rad" workcode="33-1871" from="660"> <hi rend="i">Athenaeum</hi> </xref> (24 May 1873), then collected in the 1881 <xref doc="a.2-1881.1stedn.rad" workcode="33-1871" from="290" to="292"> <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> </xref> .

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Ballads and Sonnets first edition text See WMR's note (1911). she: the syntax references “Hope (line 26), but the subtext references Jane Morris. Ballads and Sonnets first edition text The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), first edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 October 17 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), second edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1882), fourth edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1882 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), (author's proofs, British Library copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April-June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature U (Delaware Museum, author's first revise proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 10 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature U (Delaware Museum, first author's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature U (Delaware Museum, final proof, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature U (Delaware Museum, final proof, copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature U (Delaware Museum, final proof, copy 3) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Sunset Wings (Delaware draft manuscript) DGR 1871 August 0 Sunset Wings Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871 0 The Bodleian Notebook (“Kelmscott Love Sonnets”) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1874 0 The Athenaeum, 1873, Part I 1873 January-1873 June 0 Letter to Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti, 18 August 1871 DGR 1871 August 18 0 Lyrics, &c. (Princeton/Troxell bound manuscript volume) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1880-1881 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir (Volume Two) William Michael Rossetti 1970 0