Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The One Dark Shade
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.

Image of page [1r] page: [1r]
Manuscript Addition: (7 m.)
Editorial Description: Notation at lower right indicating it was written in seven minutes.
Manuscript Addition: 41
Editorial Description: DGR has writtn this number in the upper right corner.
Manuscript Addition: 2 / 1
Editorial Description: In line 10, the words "her soul" are underlined with a "2" written above, and the words "from its depths" are underlined with a "1" written above. This probably indicates that the line should read "Yet from its depths her soul ceased not to pine".
44. The one dark Shade
  • The grass she sat amidst was very green
  • And the sky over her was broad and blue;
  • The waves far off were not of any hue
  • That you could say your eyes had ever for sure you yet had seen,
  • Dark here, blue there, with ever-changing sheen;
  • And all around there stretched out to her view
  • The trees waving which breezes seemed to woo
  • To speak of old past things which once had been.
  • God's earth brightened about her, as was fit;
  • 10 Yet her soul from its depths ceased not to pine
  • Hurrying to and fro like a sear sere leaf
  • That whirls hither and thither in the whine
  • Of Autumn's hunting winds: where she did sit
  • There was a holy space shadlowed by grief.
W.M.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 39-1848.dukems.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the Special Collections Library, Duke University