Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1845 - 1881
Type of Manuscript: Various, some draft, some fair copy, not all DGR holographs; see Introduction
Scribe: DGR; May Morris; Charles Fairfax Murray

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

Image of page 1 page: 1
Note: holograph; size: 22.2x16.2cm
The House of Life




Part I

Youth and Change.




Part II

Change and Fate.




Image of page 2 page: 2
Note: holograph; size: 22.2x16.7cm. The first six lines, cancelled by DGR, originally made up the opening part of an introductory note that concluded with the words “quicken it”; the next passage, which is the last four lines of the text, comprises a late addition.
Deleted Text

In reprinting the fragmentary series of the

“House of Life,” it seemed a more harmonious

arrangement to exclude lyrics and

retain sonnets only. A further number

of these is now added, in great measure

the work of earlier years.

To speak in the first person is often

to speak most vividly; but these

emotional poems are in no sense

“occasional”. The “Life” involved is

life representative, as associated

with hope, love and death, with aspiration & forboding,

or with ideal art and beauty.

Whether the recorded moment

exist in the region of fact or of

thought is a question indifferent

to the Muse, so long only as her

touch can quicken it.
The present full series of the “House of Life” consists

of sonnets only. , since Of these it Among these It

will be evident that many poems here now first added were

the work of earlier years.
Image of page 3 page: 3
Printer's Direction: This to be used as introductory and printed in italics
Editorial Description: Marginal directions to the printer, written at top by DGR.
Note: May Morris transcript with DGR's corrections and additions; size: 22.2x17.3cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. The title in the MS is originally “The Sonnet”, but this is here cancelled and the sonnet was not printed with a specific title by DGR; the title “Introductory Sonnet” was added later when WMR collected DGR's work and it has become traditional. The variants for line 9's “converse” appear at the foot of the manuscript.
The Sonnet
Scribe: May Morris
  • A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
  • Memorial from thy the Soul's eternity
  • To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
  • Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
  • Of its own intricate arduous fulness reverent:
  • Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
  • As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
  • Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
  • A sonnet is a coin, whose its face reveals
  • 10 Thy The soul,— its rear-type converse, to what Power 'tis due:—
  • Added Text
  • rear-foil  mintage
  • converse  mint-type
  • Whether in for tribute to the august appeals
  • Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
  • It serve; or, 'mid the dark world's wharf's cavernous breath,
  • In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
Image of page 4 page: 4
Note: Section heading in DGR's holograph (written later at the top of the page); text of the sonnet probably copied by May Morris, with DGR's corrections; size: 22.2x17.6cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
Part I. Youth and Change
Scribe: DGR
Sonnet I.

Love Enthroned
Scribe: May Morris (probable)
  • I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
  • Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
  • And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen past
  • To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
  • And Youth, with some bright spray of woman's still some single golden hair
  • Yet to Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
  • Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
  • And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
  • Love's throne was not with these; but far above
  • 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
  • He sat in breathless bowers they dream ed not of;
  • Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
  • And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
  • And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.
Image of page 5 page: 5
Manuscript Addition: For later Draft of the Sonnet see reverse of last leaf of Love's Nocturn in Poems and Sonnets M. S.
Editorial Description: Notation by Charles Fairfax Murray on leaf to which the DGR manuscript fragment is here attached; the reference is to the other Fitzwilliam manuscript of this sonnet.
Note: Holograph draft copy (size: 17.9x10.9cm) with Charles Fairfax Murray's notation at the top of the page mounting the DGR MS. The draft was made prior to any of the 1869-1870 printings. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
The Bridal Birthdays
Added TextBridal Birth
Scribe: DGR
  • As when desire, long darkling, dawns, & first
  • The mother looks upon the newborn child,
  • One hour Even so my Lady turned her eyes stood at gaze & smiled,
  • And When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
  • Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
  • And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
  • Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
  • Cried to on him, and bonds of birth were burst.
  • Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
  • 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now tread range
  • About us The grove, & his kind warm hands our couch prepare:
  • Till to his song at once our Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
  • Are Be born his children, when the shadows Death's nuptial change
  • Leaves us for last light the halo of his hair.
Image of page 6 page: 6
Manuscript Addition: Reverse of “Work & Will” Sonnet 65 for second Draft of this sonnet
Editorial Description: This is Charles Fairfax Murray's notation at the top of the sheet on which the DGR MS is mounted. “Work & Will” was a title for the sonnet “ Known in Vain”.
Note: Corrected holograph copy (size: 17.9x11.3cm), with Fairfax Murray's annotation at the top of the page. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. The title Love's Testament is Fairfax Murray's addition; DGR left Flammifera as the title in the manuscript leaf, which is a small piece of paper pasted into this page of the book. At the foot of the text DGR has cancelled the following alternate title possibilities: Flammula, Flammeola, Flammifera.
Love's Testament

Flamma Flamminia

Flamminia
Flammifera
Scribe: DGR
  • O thou who in this Love's hour unswervingly ecstatically
  • Unto my lips dost dost ever more present
  • The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
  • Whom clasping I have I have clinging [???] neared & felt thy breath to be
  • The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
  • Who not in words without speech hast owned him, and intent
  • Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
  • And murmured [?] o'er the cup, Remember me:—
  • O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
  • 10 And what to him Love the glory,—when the whole
  • Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim goal shoal
  • And weary water of the place of sighs,
  • And there dost work [???] deliverance, as thine eyes
  • Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul.
Image of page 7 page: 7
Note: The page is a copy of p. 190 from the 1870 Poems , on which DGR has introduced several manuscript changes to the printed text. The proof is laid on a copy of DGR's typical notebook paper (size:16.3x11.3cm).
SONNET II.

Love's Redemption. Testament.

  • O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
  • Unto my lips heart dost ever more present ,
  • The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
    Added TextClothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
  • Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
  • The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
  • Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
  • Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
  • And murmured , o'er the cup, Remember me!— “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!“—
  • O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
  • 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
  • Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
  • And weary water of the place of sighs,
  • And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
  • Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!
Image of page 8 page: 8
Note: Holograph, corrected copy; 21.7.17.3cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. The cancelled texts of lines 6-7 are added at the foot of the sonnet, evidently as alternate readings DGR considered and then rejected.
Manuscript Addition: 4
Editorial Description: The number appears possibly in DGR's hand in the left margin alongside the title.
Added TextLovesight


Love-Sight
Scribe: DGR
  • When do I see thee most, beloved one?
  • When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
  • Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
  • The worship of that Love through thee made known?
  • Or when in the dark dusk hours, (we two alone,)
  • Along thy face, along thy neck, along
  • Thy breast my pressed lips feel the pulses throng,
  • My happy cheek upon thy bosom lies,
  • And our lips mingle kisses, words, & sighs,
  • And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
  • O Love, my love! when I no more may see
  • 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
  • Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
  • How then shall sound, upon Life's darkening slope,
  • The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
  • The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
Image of page 8v page: 8v
Manuscript Addition: 85
Editorial Description: The number is written below the text of the sonnet
Note: Holograph corrected copy. It is on a small separate sheet fixed to the bound volume; size: 21.7x17.3cm. The entire text is cancelled. It is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
Winged Hours
Scribe: DGR
  • Each hour until we meet is as a bird
  • Far-heard, that wings  That wings, far-heard  That slowly wings his gradual way along
  • Added TextFrom far that wings his gradual way along
  • The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
  • Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
  • But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
  • Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
  • Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet tune strain suffers wrong,
  • Through our contending kisses oft unheard.
  • What of that hour alas O love at last, when for her sake
  • 10 No wing shall may fly to me nor song shall may flow;
  • Till When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
  • The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
  • And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
  • Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?
Image of page 9 page: 9
Note: size: 22.2x17.8cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
Manuscript Addition: 4
Editorial Description: The number is written and crossed through alongside the title.
Manuscript Addition: “Palmifera and Lilith to be called Soul's Beauty and Body's Beauty”
Editorial Description: DGR's pencil notation
Heart's Hope.
Scribe: May Morris
  • By what word's power, the key to paths untrod,
  • Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
  • Till parted waves of song yield up the shore
  • Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
  • For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
  • Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
  • Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
  • Thee from myself, neither our Love from God.
  • Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
  • 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
  • As to all hearts all things shall signify ;
  • Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
  • As instantaneous penetrating sense,
  • In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.
Image of page 10 page: 10
Manuscript Addition: v. reverse of Willowwood III sonnet 51 for earlier draft
Editorial Description: Fairfax Murray's notation at top of the page of the volume to which the manuscript fragment is fixed
Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 17.9x11.1cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. At the bottom of the page, the words "confluent" and "interfluent" are written in a lighter ink, perhaps as alternatives for "emulous" in line 13.
The Kiss
Scribe: DGR
  • What withering smouldering senses in death's sick delay
  • Or seizure of malign vicissitude
  • Can rob this body of honour, or denude
  • This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
  • For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
  • With these my lips such gracious consonant interlude
  • As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
  • The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
  • I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
  • 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I & she,—
  • A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
  • A god when all our all our life-breaths met to fan
  • Our The Our life-blood, till the immingling intense Love's emulous ardours ran,
  • Fire within fire, desire in deity.
Image of page 11 page: 11
Note: Holograph, corrected copy; size: 22.2x16.9cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. The fragmentary cancelled readings for line 12 are scripted below the text of the sonnet.
Supreme Surrender
Scribe: DGR
  • To all the spirits of love that wander by
  • Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
  • My lady lies apparent; and the deep
  • Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
  • The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
  • Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
  • When Fate's one day doth from his harvest reap
  • The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.
  • First touched, the hand now warm beneath my neck
  • 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
  • Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
  • Where ’neath one tress the longing long did wake one shorn tress [?]
  • Added TextWhere one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
  • prolonged the/ [?]
  • the longing long did wake/felt/stilled long
  • with/and longing/my wonder[?]
  • And next the heart there trembling that trembled for its sake
  • Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.
Image of page 11v page: 11v
Manuscript Addition: Lo! long / Of old where [???]
Editorial Description: This is the verso of the manuscript of “ Supreme Surrender”; it contains a fragment of text written in DGR's hand at the bottom of the leaf, which here appears crosswise.
Note: The page is blank except for the fragment of text written in DGR's hand at the bottom of the leaf; size: 22.2x16.9cm.
Image of page 12 page: 12
Note: Holograph, corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. Variants of line 12 and 13 are at the bottom of the manuscript page. They read: "never wearying of / Thy deep-lit eyes and/[?]/with shadowing hair above."
Love's Lovers
Scribe: DGR
  • Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone,
  • And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
  • In idle scornful hours he flings away;
  • And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
  • Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
  • Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
  • Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
  • And thank his wings today that he is flown.
  • My lady only loves the heart of Love:
  • 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
  • His [?] deep-bower of root His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
  • There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
  • Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowy hair above,
  • Seals with thy mouth his immortality.
Added Text
  • never wearying of
  • Thy deep-lit eyes and/[?]/with shadowing hair above.
  • Image of page 13 page: 13
    Manuscript Addition: Passion & Worship
    Editorial Description: Title added above DGR's manuscript, on the leaf to which the manuscript is attached, in hand of Fairfax Murray.
    Printer's Direction: Print this after Love's Lovers page 118
    Editorial Description: DGR's directions to the printer.
    Note: Fair copy holograph, with corrections; size: 18x11.1cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Love and Worship
    Scribe: DGR
    • Love brought to us a white-stoled harp-player
    • Even as my lady and I lay all alone;
    • Saying: “Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
    • Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
    • Only my strains are to my dear ones dear.”
    • Then said I: “Through thy music's passionate tone
    • Even now, Lord Love, I heard this harp make moan
    • And still methought the note was loud deep and clear.”
    • Then said my lady: “Even as thou art Love,
    • 10 Lo, this is Worship this man hath for me.
    • Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
    • But where wan water sighs is high throbs within the grove
    • And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
    • This harp still makes my name its voluntary.”
    Image of page 14 page: 14
    Note: Holograph, corrected draft; size: 22.2x17.6cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. DGR wrote several variations for line 10 in the upper left corner, in the upper right corner, and at the bottom of the page.
    The Portrait
    • O lord of all compassionate control,
    • O Love! let this my Lady's picture glow
    • Under my hand to praise her name, and show
    • Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
    • That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
    • Beyond the glory light that the her sweet glances throw
    • And [?] refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
    • The very sky and sea-line of her soul.
    • Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe lifted throat
    • 10 The moved mouth [?] its authenticates the voice and kiss,
    • The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
    • Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
    • That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
    • They that would know her face look on her must come to me.
    Added Text
  • The mouth's mould testifies of testifies figures forth the voice and kiss
  • configures its own
  • The mouth impersonates [?] perpetuates recapitulates corroborates the voice & kiss
  • propigate communicate authenticate opinionate determinate [?] immaginate
  • Added Textrecapitulate
  • Image of page 15 page: 15
    Note: Text copied by Charles Fairfax Murray. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Sonnet XI

    The Love-Letter
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
    • As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee,
    • Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
    • The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair,—
    • Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
    • Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
    • That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
    • Like married music in Love's answering air.
    • Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
    • 10 Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd,
    • And her breast's secrets peered into her breast;
    • When through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
    • My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
    • The words that made her love the loveliest.
    Image of page 16 page: 16
    Note: May Morris fair copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    The Lovers' Walk
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
    • On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
    • Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fanned:—
    • An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
    • Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
    • Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
    • Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spanned
    • With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—
    • Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
    • 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
    • Whose passionate hearts are were lean ed by Love's high decree
    • Together on his heart for ever true,
    • As the white cloud-foaming firmamental blue
    • Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.
    Image of page 17 page: 17
    Note: fair copy; size: 22.2x17.2cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Youth's Antiphony.
    Scribe: May Morris
    • “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
    • How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
    • And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
    • How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
    • Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
    • “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow,
    • Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
    • Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.
    • Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
    • 10 In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
    • Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,
    • Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—
    • What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
    • Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.
    Image of page 18 page: 18
    Note: May Morris fair copy, with a DGR correction; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Youth's Spring-Tribute
    Scribe: May Morris
    • On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
    • I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
    • And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
    • Look through the rippling golden tresses here and there.
    • On these debateable borders of the year
    • Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
    • The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow ;
    • And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.
    • But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
    • 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
    • Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
    • Up your warm throat to your warm lips; for this
    • Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
    • With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.

    Image of page 19 page: 19
    Manuscript Addition: 63
    Editorial Description: The number is written below the text of the sonnet.
    Manuscript Addition: The Birth Bond
    Editorial Description: Received title written by Charles Fairfax Murray.
    Note: holograph corrected fair copy; size: 21.7x17.8cm. Charles Fairfax Murray has added the received title, “The Birth Bond”, at the top of the manuscript, in parentheses. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Nearest Kindred.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Have you not noted, in some family
    • Where two dear ones from the were born of a first marriage-bed,
    • How still they own their fragrant bond, though fed
    • And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
    • That How to their father's children they shall be
    • In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
    • Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
    • And in a word complete community?
    • Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
    • 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
    • One nearer kindred than I eer knew of birth hinted of.
    • O born with me somewhere that men forget,
    • And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
    • Known for my life's own sister well enough!

    Image of page 19v page: 19v
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 21.7x17.8cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Pandora

    (for a Picture)
    Scribe: DGR
    • What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
    • The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
    • And Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
    • In its own likeness make thee half divine?
    • Was it that Juno's face brow might stand the a sign
    • Or not For ever? and [?] the mien of Pallas be
    • A deadly curse thing? and that all men might see
    • In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?
    • What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
    • 10The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
    • Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
    • Aye, shut hug the casket close now! Whither they go
    • Thou may'st not dare to think; nor canst thou know
    • If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

    Image of page 20 page: 20
    Printer's Direction: Print this after The Birth-Bond page 132
    Editorial Description: DGR's directions to the printer for the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets volume.
    Printer's Direction: Print this after Winged Hours page 134
    Editorial Description: This text is cancelled by DGR
    Note: May Morris fair copy, corrected by DGR; size: 17.8x11.1cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    A Day of Love
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Those envied places which do know her well,
    • And are so scornful of this lonely place,
    • Now for a while Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
    • Nowhere but here she is: and as while Love's spell
    • From his predominant presence doth compel
    • All alien hours, an outworn populace,
    • The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
    • With their sweet confederate music favorable.
    • Now many memories make solicitous
    • 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
    • With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
    • As here between our kisses we sit thus
    • Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
    • Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

    Image of page 21 page: 21
    Note: fair copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head. Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title, “Beauty's Pageant,” at the top of the manuscript.
    Manuscript Addition: 19 1718
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Manuscript Addition: Beauty's Pageant
    Editorial Description: Received title written by Charles Fairfax Murray.
    Love's Pageant
    Scribe: May Morris
    • What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
    • Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
    • What marshalled marvels on the skirt of May,
    • Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
    • What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd
    • Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
    • Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
    • Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?
    • Love's very vesture & elect disguise
    • 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
    • Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
    • Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
    • Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
    • Unborn, that read these words and saw her not

    Image of page 22 page: 22
    Note: May Morris fair copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Genius in Beauty
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
    • Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
    • Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
    • Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
    • Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
    • More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
    • Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
    • Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
    • As many men are poets in their youth
    • 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
    • Even through all change the indomitable song;
    • So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
    • Rends shallower grace with ruin sore forsooth void of ruth,
    • Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.
    Image of page 23 page: 23
    Note: Holograph, corrected copy; size:18.1x11.1cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: Silent Noon
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title, “Silent Noon” at the top of the manuscript.
    The Silent Hour
    Scribe: DGR
    • Your hands lie open in the long lush grass
    • And the sweet points look through like rosy blooms:
    • The panting meadow Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
    • With billowing skies that scatter & amass:
    • AllAround us [?] our nest, far as the eye can pass,
    • Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
    • Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
    • 'Tis visible silence, as of the like the still hour-glass.
    • Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
    • 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :—
    • Even So this wing'd hour is drop t ped to us from above.
    • Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
    • This close-companioned inarticulate hour
    • When twofold silence was the song of love.
    Image of page 24 page: 24
    Note: Holograph, corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 16 14 1519
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    The Silent Hour Noon.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
    • And The sweet finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
    • Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams & glooms
    • With 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass:
    • All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
    • Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
    • Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
    • 'Tis visible silence, like the still as the hourglass.
    • Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
    • 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
    • So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
    • Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
    • This close-companioned inarticulate hour
    • When twofold silence was the song of love.

    Image of page 25 page: 25
    Note: May Morris copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 21 19 20
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Manuscript Addition: last copied
    Editorial Description: May Morris's note fixed to the upper right hand corner of the manuscript
    Gracious Moonlight
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
    • When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
    • Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
    • So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace grace
    • When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
    • What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
    • Gathers and garners from all things that are
    • Their silent penetrative loveliness?
    • O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
    • 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
    • With flowering rush and sceptered arrow-leaf,
    • So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
    • Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
    • And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

    Image of page 26 page: 26
    Note: Charles Fairfax Murray copy. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Sonnet XXI.

    Love-Sweetness
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray.
    • Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
    • About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
    • In gracious fostering union garlanded;
    • Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
    • Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
    • Her mouth's culled sweetness by the kisses shed
    • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
    • Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
    • What sweeter than these things, except the thing
    • 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
    • The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
    • And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
    • Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
    • The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
    Image of page 27 page: 27
    Note: Copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.6cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 35 34 22
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Heart's Haven
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
    • Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,
    • With still tears showering and averted face,
    • Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
    • And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
    • I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
    • Against all ill the fortified strong place
    • And sweet reserve of sovereign countercharms.
    • And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
    • 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and screens turns away
    • All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
    • Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
    • And as soft waters warble to the moon,
    • Our answering kisses spirits chime one roundelay.
    Image of page 28 page: 28
    Printer's Direction: Print this after Nearest Kindred page 120
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets volume, written in the upper right hand corner of the manuscript. The reference is to “ The Birth-Bond.”
    Note: Holograph copy corrected; size: 17.9x11.2cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Love's Baubles
    Scribe: DGR
    • I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
    • Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
    • And round him ladies thronged in close pursuit,
    • Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
    • And from one hand the petal and the core
    • Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
    • Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
    • Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
    • At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
    • 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
    • And as I took them, at her touch they shone
    • With inmost azure heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
    • And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
    • Follies of love are love's high ministers.”
    Image of page 29 page: 29
    Note: Holograph fair copy with corrections; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 25 23
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Pride of Youth and Change
    Scribe: DGR
    • Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
    • The dead, but little in his heart can find,
    • Since without need of thought to his clear mind
    • Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
    • Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
    • Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
    • Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
    • Where night-racks shroud the Old Love fugitive.
    • There is a change in every hour's recall,
    • 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
    • On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
    • Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
    • The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
    • Even as the beads of a told rosary.
    Image of page 30 page: 30
    Note: Charles Fairfax Murray copy. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: see reverse of Sonnet IV for original draft.
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray's note at the top of the page.
    Sonnet XXV.

    Winged Hours
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Each hour until we meet is as a bird
    • That wings from far his gradual way along
    • The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
    • Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
    • But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
    • Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
    • Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong,
    • Full oft through our contending joys unheard.
    • What of that hour at last, when for her sake
    • 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
    • When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
    • The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
    • And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
    • Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?
    Image of page 31 page: 31
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Mid-Rapture
    Scribe: DGR
    • Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
    • Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
    • Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
    • Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
    • All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
    • Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
    • Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
    • Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—
    • What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
    • 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
    • My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there,
    • Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
    • What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
    • O lovely and beloved, O my love?
    Image of page 31v page: 31v
    Note: This is a holograph draft fragment of the final stanza of “ The King's Tragedy”; it is signed: D. G. Rossetti and dated Feb. 20th 1881. It is cancelled by DGR.; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Scribe: DGR
    Deleted Text
    • And “O James!” she said,— “My James!” she said,—
    • “Alas for the woeful thing
    • That a poet true and a friend of man,
    • In desperate days of bale and ban,
    • Should needs be born a king!”
    D. G. Rossetti Feb. 20, 1881
    Image of page 32 page: 32
    Note: May Morris fair copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 28 26 25b 27
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Manuscript Addition: (Heart's Compass)
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title at the top of the manuscript.
    Love's Compass
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
    • But as the meaning of all things that are;
    • A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
    • Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
    • Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
    • Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
    • Being of its furthest fires oracular ;—
    • The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
    • Even such Love is ; and is not thy name Love?
    • 10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
    • All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
    • Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
    • And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
    • Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.
    Image of page 33 page: 33
    Note: May Morris fair copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.7cm. The line 13 variant is written below the text. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 2? 2? 26 28
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Manuscript Addition: Soul-Light
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title at the top of the manuscript.
    Lovelight
    Scribe: May Morris
    • What other woman could be loved like you,
    • Or how of you should love possess his fill?
    • After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
    • As at the end of some deep avenue
    • A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
    • Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
    • Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
    • Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.
    • And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
    • 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
    • Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
    • From limpid lambent hours of day begun ;—
    • Even so, through eyes & voice within your arms, your soul doth move
    • My soul with changeful light of infinite love.
    Image of page 34 page: 34
    Note: May Morris fair copy, corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: ? ? 2?
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    The Moonstar
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
    • Because my lady is more lovely still.
    • Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
    • To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
    • Of delicate life Love labours to assess
    • My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
    • How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
    • But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”
    • Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
    • 10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
    • An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
    • Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
    • Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
    • Lady, not thou but she was glorified.
    Image of page 35 page: 35
    Note: holograph corrected fair copy; size: 22.2x17.3cm. The text is mounted crosswise in the book, running from foot to head.
    Manuscript Addition: 2? 2? 31
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Last Fire
    Scribe: DGR
    • Love, through your body spirit and mine what summer eve
    • Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
    • Since this day's sun of passion rapture filled the west
    • And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
    • Now Awhile now softlier clinging let your bosom heave,
    • While As in Love's harbour, between breast and breast,
    • Within your cherishing arms I sink to rest,
    • Added TextAs in Love's harbour, even your that loving breast,
    • Added TextAll care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
    • And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.
    • Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
    • 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
    • Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees.
    • This day at least was Summer's paramour,
    • Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
    • With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.
    Image of page 36 page: 36
    Note: May Morris fair copy; size: 22.2x17.2cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 36
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Her Gifts
    Scribe: May Morris
    • High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
    • Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
    • A glance like water brimming with the sky
    • Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
    • Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral
    • The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
    • All music and all silence held thereby;
    • Deep locks, the brow's embowering coronal;
    • A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine
    • 10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
    • Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
    • And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:—
    • These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.
    • Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

    Image of page 37 page: 37
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.7cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 3?[] [?]
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Manuscript Addition: (Equal Troth)
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title at the top of the manuscript.
    Love Measure
    Scribe: DGR
    • Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
    • For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
    • I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
    • All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
    • Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
    • And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
    • Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
    • All beauties and all mysteries interwove.
    • But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
    • 10 “Then only” (say'st thou) “could I love thee less,
    • When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
    • Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
    • Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
    • Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.

    Image of page 38 page: 38
    Note: May Morris fair copy with DGR's corrections; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The variant lines 6-8 are scripted at the foot of the page in pencil.
    Manuscript Addition: 37 38
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Venus Victrix
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Could Juno's self more heavenly sovereign presence wear
    • Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace?—
    • Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face
    • O'er poet's page golddeep-shadowed in thy hair?
    • Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair,
    • When from the sea of love's insatiate bliss
    • Thy breast is reared, to yield to the last kiss
    • Thy sweet lips like the last wave murmuring there?
    • Added Text
    • When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance
    • Hovers thy smile doth play, & mingles with thy glance
    • That sweet voice like etc.
    • Before such triune loveliness divine
    • 10 Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims
    • The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
    • Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names;
    • And Venus Victrix to mine arms heart doth bring
    • Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.
    Image of page 39 page: 39
    Note: May Morris fair copy with DGR's corrections; size: 22.2x15.4cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 22 20 21
    Editorial Description: DGR's notes for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    The Dark Glass
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Not I myself know all my love for thee:
    • How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
    • Tomorrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
    • Shall birth and death, and all dark souls names that be
    • As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
    • Lash deaf mine ears & blind my face with spray;
    • And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
    • And ultimate outpost of eternity ?
    • Lo! what am I to Love, the Lord of all?
    • 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
    • One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
    • Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
    • And veriest touch of powers primordial
    • That any hour-girt life may understand.
    Image of page 40 page: 40
    Note: holograph draft copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Manuscript Addition: The Lamp's Shrine
    Editorial Description: Charles Fairfax Murray has written the received title at the top of the manuscript.
    The Love-Lamp
    Scribe: DGR
    • Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
    • That I might love thee still in spite of it:
    • Yet how should our Lord Love one ray remit curtail one whit
    • Of the pure crown Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
    • [?] AlasAlas! he can but make my heart's low vault
    • Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
    • By thy gem-cinctured love-lamp exquisite
      Added TextBy thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite,
    • With Like fiery chrysoprase and bright in deep basalt.
    • Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
    • 10 Myself within the beams his brow doth dart
    • Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
    • In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
    • For lo! in honour of thine excellencies
    • My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.

    Image of page 41 page: 41
    Printer's Direction: Print this after M. S. A Day of Love
    Editorial Description: Cancelled directions to the printer in upper right hand corner.
    Printer's Direction: Print this after Winged Hours page 134
    Editorial Description: Directions for printer below text of the poem
    Note: size: 17.9x11.2cm.
    Life-in-Love
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Not in thy body is thy life at all
    • But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
    • Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
    • What else were sorrow's servant & death's thrall.
    • Look on thyself without her, and recall
    • The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
    • That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
    • O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.
    • Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
    • 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
    • For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
    • Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
    • 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
    • Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.

    Image of page 42 page: 42
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size:22.2x17.4cm.
    The Love-Moon
    Scribe: DGR
    • When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
    • Which once was all the life years held for thee,
    • Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
    • Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
    • How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
    • Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
    • Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
    • Make them of buried troth remembrancers? broken troth the star-chambers?
    • Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
    • 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
    • Matins & vespers Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
    • Ah mercy Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
    • In these the mystic culminant changes which approve
    • The love-moon which that shall light my soul to Love?’

    Image of page 43 page: 43
    Manuscript Addition: See also MS of Willowwood IV
    Editorial Description: Fairfax Murray's note added to page on which the manuscript has been mounted
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 17.9x11.1cm.
    The Morrow's-Message
    Scribe: DGR
    • “Thou ghost,” I said, “and is thy name Today?—
    • Yesterday's son, with such a beaten an abject brow!—
    • And can Tomorrow be more pale than thou?”
    • While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
    • Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
    • And each beforehand mak es -eth such such poor avow
    • As of dead old leaves beneath the budding bough
    • And Or night-drift that the sunbeams cast sundawn shreds away.”
    • Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
    • 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!’
    • But therewithal the tremulous silence said:—
    • “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
    • Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
    • And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.”
    Image of page 44 page: 44
    Manuscript Addition: Sleepless Dreams
    Editorial Description: Received title copied at top by Fairfax Murray
    Note: Holograph copy with corrections; size: 21.9x17.4cm. The cancelled variant lines 9-12 are scripted at the foot on the page.
    Sleepless Love
    Scribe: DGR
    • Set all in jet, yet glimmering like a star,
    • O vain night sweeter than the nights of youth,
    • Why should my heart within thy ring, forsooth,
    • Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
    • Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
    • What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
    • And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy & Ruth,
    • Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
    • Nay, night! would false Love upon spread feign a grove in thee
    • 10 That darkens round my the head with leaves, and bears
    • Rest for worn man's eyes and music for sore his ears?
    • O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
    • Alas! how brief a grace, how doled to me,
    • (To us, hard Love! now riots through my spheres
    • Of life, and holds awake mine eyes & ears?
    • O solitary night! thy shade should be &c
    • A thicket hung with masks of mockery
    • And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

    Image of page 45 page: 45
    Editorial Description: Manuscript crossed through twice by DGR
    Manuscript Addition: 62
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Note: Holograph draft copy, cancelled; size: 21.7x17.2cm.
    Sleepless Love

    • Set all in jet, but Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering like a with one star,
    • O vain night sweeter than the nights of youth,
    • Why should my heart within [?] within thy ring within thy spell, forsooth,
    • Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
    • Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
    • What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
    • And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
    • Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
    • Nay, night! would false Love feign [?] counterfeit in thee
    • 10 [indecipherable text]
      Added TextThe shadowy palpitating grove that bears
    • Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
    • O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
    • A thicket hung with masks of mockery
    • And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

    Image of page 45v page: 45v
    Editorial Description: DGR has crossed out the sonnet
    Note: Holograph fair copy; 21.7x17.2cm.
    May 1869
    Scribe: DGR
    • Would God your health were as this month of May
    • Should be, were this not Englnd,—and your face
    • Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
    • And laugh beneath the budding hawthorne spray!
    • But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey
    • While yet May's lyre is tuning, and her song
    • Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong,
    • And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.
    • If in my life be breath of Italy,
    • 10 Would God that I might yield it all for to you!
    • So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
    • The languor of your Maytime's hawthorne tree,
    • My spirit at rest should walk unseen & see
    • The garland of your beauty bloom anew.

    Image of page 46 page: 46
    Manuscript Addition: 41 40
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Note: Holograph fair copy corrected; size: 22.2x17.6cm. The title seems to have been added to the MS after the text was composed.
    Between Meetings
    Scribe: DGR
    • Two separate divided silences,
    • Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
    • Two glances which together would rejoice
    • In love, now lost like stars beyond the dark trees;
    • Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
    • Two mouths which as two fire-flakes of flame
    • Added Textbosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
    • Would, meeting in one kiss clasp, be made the same;
    • Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:—
    • Such are we now. ; yet Ah! may our hope forecast
    • 10 Haply Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
    • Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
    • An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
    • Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
    • Faint as dead shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
    Image of page 46v page: 46v
    Manuscript Addition: Mem. / To couple this with the piece now called the / Water Willow, & to call them jointly — / Parted Presence I. Worlds/Lands Apart or From Land to Land / II. Worlds Apart & From World to World / Between Land / Between World / Life Parted / Death Parted / The two following poems to be / finally called / Parted Presence / 1. A Life-Parting / 2. A Death-Parting
    Editorial Description: At the top of the page are DGR's notes for alterations in the titles of the poems that come to us as “ Parted Presence” and “ A Death-Parting.” It is clear that this sheet's notations were made around the time of the composition of “ Parted Presence” (1875-1876), and not of the sonnet on the overleaf (1871).
    Note: size: 22.2x17.6cm.
    Scribe: DGR
    Note: The fragment of the poem is written at the bottom of the page.
    • Your voice is not on the air,
    • Yet, love, I can hear your voice;
    • It bids my heart to rejoice
    • As knowing your heart is there,—
    • A music sent to declare
    • The truth of your steadfast choice.
    • O love, how sweet is your voice!
    Image of page 47 page: 47
    Note: May Morris fair copy with DGR's corrections; size:22.2x17.7cm.
    Through Death to Love
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
    • From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
    • Like multiform circumfluence manifold
    • Of the stark night night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
    • Of fire dumb hoarse- tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
    • Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
    • Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
    • Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
    • Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
    • 10 One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
    • Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
    • Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
    • Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
    • Hath lord guest fire-fledged as thine, whose guest life lord is Love?
    Image of page 48 page: 48
    Manuscript Addition: 4[?] 48
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Note: size: 22.2x17.6cm.
    Hope Overtaken
    Scribe: May Morris
    • I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
    • So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
    • Is passed at length; and garmented in green
    • Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.
    • Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
    • On all that road our footsteps erst had been
    • Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
    • Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
    • O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
    • 10 No eyes but hers,—O Love and Hope the same!—
    • Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
    • That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
    • O hers thy lips voice and very hers thy name!
    • Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!

    Image of page 49 page: 49
    Manuscript Addition: 4[?] 49
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Note: size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    Love & Hope
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Kiss once again. Thank? Bless Love and Hope Full many a withered year
    • Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
    • And clasped together where the blown leaves lay,
    • We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
    • Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
    • Flutes softly to us from some green byway:
    • Those years, those tears are dead, but only they:—
    • Kiss once again, my love Bless love and hope, mine own; for we are here.
    • Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
    • 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
    • Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
    • Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
    • Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
    • Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.

    Image of page 50 page: 50
    Note: size: 22.2x17.6cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 50
    Editorial Description: DGR's numbering added to establish the sonnet's position in thew sequence
    Cloud and Wind
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
    • Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
    • Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
    • Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
    • Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
    • Her warrant against all her haste might rue?—
    • Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
    • What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?
    • And if I die first, shall death be then
    • 10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep?—
    • Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
    • Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain,)
    • The hour when you too learn that all is vain
    • And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?
    Image of page 51 page: 51
    Manuscript Addition: 45
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence; positioned left of the title.
    Manuscript Addition: 23
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Note: Fair copy, holograph; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Secret Parting
    Scribe: DGR
    • Because our talk was of the cloud-control
    • And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
    • Her kisses faltered at their ivory gate ,
    • And her eyes dreamed towards a distant goal:
    • But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
    • Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
    • Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
    • And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.
    • Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
    • 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
    • Which memory haunts & whither sleep may roam,—
    • They only know for whom the roof of Love
    • Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
    • Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.

    Image of page 52 page: 52
    Sonnet XLVI.

    Parted Love
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • What shall be said of this embattled day
    • And armèd occupation of this night
    • By all thy foes beleaguered, now when sight
    • Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
    • Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
    • As every sense to which she dealt delight
    • Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
    • To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?
    • Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
    • 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
    • Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
    • Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
    • Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
    • And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.
    Image of page 53 page: 53
    Sonnet XLVII.

    Broken Music
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
    • Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
    • But breathless with averted eyes elate
    • She sits, with open lips and open ears,
    • That it may call her twice. Mid doubts and fears
    • Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
    • A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
    • And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.
    • But now, whatever while the soul is fain
    • 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
    • The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
    • No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
    • O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
    • Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.
    Image of page 54 page: 54
    Manuscript Addition: The first draft of this sonnet appears to be that on the reverse of Lost on Both Sides— Sonnet 91. It is dated “Dies Atra 1st May 1869.” A second much cancelled draft is on the reverse of the Landmark Sonnet 57 the following is a clear copy of this
    Editorial Description: Note by Fairfax Murray along right margin of the text.
    Note: Holograph fair copy; size: 17.6x10.8cm.
    Death-in-Love
    Scribe: DGR
    • There came an image in Life's retinue
    • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
    • Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
    • O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
    • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
    • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
    • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
    • When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.
    • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
    • 10 The banner rounds its staff, to furl and cling,—
    • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
    • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
    • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
    • I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”
    Image of page 55 page: 55
    Manuscript Addition: Dante & Beatrice
    Editorial Description: Note written along right margin of the text by Charles Fairfax Murray; it refers to the drawing Dante and Beatrice , the sketch on the verso of this page.
    Editorial Description: The sonnet is cancelled with two strokes across the text
    Note: holograph fair copy with corrections; size:21.6x17.7cm.
    Willowwood I
    Scribe: DGR
    Deleted Text
    • I sat with Love upon a little woodside well,
    • Leaning across the water, I and he;
    • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
    • But touched his lute wherein was audible
    • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
    • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
    • In the low wave; and that sound came to be
    • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
    • And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
    • 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
    • He swept the lymph spring that watered my heart's drouth.
    • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
    • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
    • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

    Image of page 55v page: 55v
    Note: Pencil Sketch, 21.6 x 17.7 cm. It may illustrate the sonnet on the reverse side, “ Willowwood I..” It depicts Dante, carrying a book, looking back at Beatrice who is passing him; there are stairs sketched in at the right. The sketch is clearly a version of the left panel of The Salutation of Beatrice .
     

    Dante and Beatrice

    Figure: Pencil Sketch, 21.6 x 17.7 cm.



    Image of page 56 page: 56
    Editorial Description: The sonnet is cancelled with two cross strokes.
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 21.8x17.6cm.
    II
    Scribe: DGR
    • And now Love sang: and but his was such a song,
    • So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
    • As souls disused in death's sterility
    • May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
    • And I was made aware of a dumb throng
    • That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
    • Each a known form All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
    • The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
    • Added TextThose shadows of our days [?]ed among
    • They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
    • 10 While fast together, drenched with tears of bliss alive from the abyss,
    • Added TextWhile locked together in tears that Love calls his
    • Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
    • And pity of self through all made broken moan
    • Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
    • And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—
    Image of page 56v page: 56v
    Editorial Description: Text cancelled with two cross strokes
    Manuscript Addition: 58
    Editorial Description: Number added, not by DGR, at top right hand corner
    Note: Corrected holograph fair copy; size:21.8x17.6cm. Beneath the text, there appears to be a rough sketch of a woman's draped arm and shoulder.
    Scribe: DGR
    • O bocca che nell' ora del compenso
    • Tante volte baciai, e tante volte
    • Sentii da te, con mille voti accolte,
    • Parole [?] d'un Quella parola d'immortal e assenso consenso:—
    • O possa dei tuoi baci il sacro incenso
    • Ravvolger sempre in nuvole più folte
    • Le antiche tante omai larve sepolte,
    • Empiendo il ciel del nostro amore immenso!
    • Vieni, beata bocca, O vieni ancora!
    • 10 Lunghe da te Pensando a te, l'amor e da te disìa
    • Dolce rugiada in ben rosata calorosa via. in roseata via(?)
    • Non sei tu quella in cui ora ed ogn'ora
    • Io vivo sol,— cui sol nell'alma mia
    • La vita, e la morte, e l'amorè, adora? implora

    Maggio 1869
    Image of page 57 page: 57
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected; size: 22x17cm.
    Willowwood
    Scribe: DGR
    • O ye, that walk, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
    • That walk with hollow faces burning white;
    • What depth, alas! fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
    • What long, what longer years hours, one longest lifelong night,
    • Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
    • Your hearts to rest last hope lost, who so in vain invite
    • Your lips to feast on their forbidden food unto their unforgotten food,
    • Ere ye, again ere ye again , shall see the light!
    • Yea view Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
    • 10 Where With grief-spurge grows and wan, with shame-wort burning red:
    • O God Alas! if ever such a pillow could
    • Give rest at all to any weary head,
    • O God alone unknown, the God of good,
    • How could it be till brain and soul were dead?

    Image of page 58 page: 58
    Manuscript Addition: 59
    Editorial Description: Number written at top right hand corner, not by DGR.
    Editorial Description: Text cancelled with two large strokes
    Note: Corrected holograph fair copy; size: 21.6x16.7cm. The variants for lines 12-14 are at the bottom of the page.
    III
    Scribe: DGR
    • ‘O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
    • That walk with hollow faces burning white;
    • What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
    • What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
    • Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
    • Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
    • Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
    • Ere ye, ere ye again may shall see the light!
    • Alas! the bitter banks of in Willowwood,
    • 10 With grief-spurge tear-spurge wan, with love-wort blood-wort burning red:
    • Alas! if only ever such a pillow could
    • Steep deep your life the soul in sleep till it she were dead,—
    • Better the very soul cease all life forget her than this thing,
    • That Willowwood should hold your her wandering!”
    • Added Text
    • Alas! if ever such a pillow could
    • Give rest at all to any weary head,
    • O God alone unknown, the God of good,
    • How should it be till brain & soul were dead!
    Image of page 58v page: 58v
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected; size: 21.6x16.7cm.
    The Kiss
    Scribe: DGR
    • What withering foulness in life's smouldering obsolete transitive senses in life's death's sick delay
    • Or seizure of malign vicissitude
    • Can rob this body of honour, or denude
    • This soul of wedding-raiment, worn today?
    • For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
    • With these my lips such jubilant consonant interlude
    • As mighty laurelled Orpheus won not longed for when he wooed
    • The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
    • As never yet Apollo's mastering word
    • Won from the winds to yield his roundelay
    • As never Orpheus love-bewildered word
    • Won from his love with that last roundelay
    • I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
    • 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
    • A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
    • A god when these our all our life-breath s met to fan
    • Our The Our life-blood, till the imperial love's emulous immingling ambrosial affluent Love's orient ardours ran,
    • Fire within fire, desire in deity.
    Image of page 59 page: 59
    Note: Holograph draft; size: 22x16.7cm.
    IV
    Scribe: DGR
    • So sang he: and as meeting rose & rose
    • Together cling through the wind's wellaway,
    • Nor fell at once, yet near the end of day
    • The leaves drop loosened till the heart-stain flows,—
    • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
    • And the her face fell back drowned, and in the grey
    • Still water nothing but my own face lay:
    • How thence I went, I know not if Love knows.
    • I know that here in Willowwood I shall fare
    • 10 With her the parted paths For ever to and fro, but here no spell
    • To find again with her the vanished well:
    • And in what glade she waits, and holds her hair
    • Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
    • The talking willows know but may not tell.
    Image of page 60 page: 60
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 21.9x16.5cm.
    IV
    Scribe: DGR
    • So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
    • Together cling through the wind's wellaway
    • Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
    • The leaves drop loosened till the heart-stain flows,—
    • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
    • And her face fell back drowned, and in the grey and as it lay
    • Of the water nothing but my own face lay:
      Added TextAnd [?] like the eyes the face grew grey
    • How thence I went I know not if Love knows.
    • I know that here in Willowwood I fare
    • 10 For ever to and fro, but here no spell
    • To find again with her To track my footprints to the vanished well:
    • And in what glades glade s she waits seeks, and holds her hair
    • Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
    • The talking whispering willows know but may not tell.
    • The willows & these waters may not tell.
    • The whispers of these willows will not tell.
    • The willows & these waters may not tell.
    Image of page 61 page: 61
    Editorial Description: Text crossed through with two strokes.
    Manuscript Addition: 60
    Editorial Description: Number added in upper right hand corner, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 21.7x16.9cm. The variant lines 9-14 are written as a unit at the bottom of the page.
    IV
    Scribe: DGR
    • So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
    • Together cling through the wind's wellaway
    • Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
    • The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
    • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
    • And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
    • As its grey eyes; and if I it ever may
    • Behold it more Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.
    • Only I know that I leaned low and drank
    • 10A long draught of from the water where she sank,
    • Her breath and all her tears and all her her whole soul:
    • And as I drank, I know I felt Love's face
    • Laid on my neck Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
    • Till both our heads were in his aureole.
    • Added Text
    • I know that here in Willowwood I fare
    • For ever to and fro, but here no spell
    • To track my footprints to the vanished well:
    • And in what glade she seeks, & holds her hair
    • Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
    • These whispering trees have heard but may not tell.
    Image of page 61v page: 61v
    Note: Holograph corrected fair copy; size: 21.7x16.9cm.
    The Morrow's-Message
    Scribe: DGR
    • O thou sad ghost “Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name Today?—
    • Yesterday's son, with such an beaten abject brow!—
    • And can Tomorrow be more pale than thou?”
    • While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
    • Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
    • And each beforehand maketh make s vile such poor avow
    • As of dead old leaves beneath the budding bough
    • Or night-drift that the sunshine casts sundawn shreds away.”
    • Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
    • 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!”
    • But therewithal the tremulous silence said:—
    • “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
    • Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
    • And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.”

    Image of page 62 page: 62
    Manuscript Addition: 54 53
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence.
    Note: copy with three DGR corrections; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    Without Her
    Scribe: May Morris
    • What of her glass without her? The blank grey
    • There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
    • Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
    • Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
    • Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
    • Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
    • Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
    • And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
    • What of my the heart without her? Nay, my poor heart,
    • 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
    • A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
    • Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
    • Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
    • Sheds doubled darkness o'er up the labouring hill.

    Image of page 63 page: 63
    Note: copy with one DGR correction; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 54
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for positioning the sonnet in the sequence
    Love's Fatality
    Scribe: May Morris
    • Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
    • Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
    • Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
    • And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
    • But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
    • I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
    • Vainly all night with spell- girt wrought power has spann'd
    • The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.
    • Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
    • 10 Made moan : “Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
    • Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
    • And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
    • Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,—
    • Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”
    Image of page 64 page: 64
    Printer's Direction: print this after Willowwood page 122
    Editorial Description: DGR's note to the printer, written beside the title
    Note: Holograph corrected copy, possibly draft copy; size: 22.2x17.6cm. There is a swirling tubular doodle below text of the poem.
    Stillborn Joy Love The Children's Hour
    Scribe: DGR
    • The hour which might have been yet might not be,
    • Which man's and woman's heart conceived & bore
    • Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
    • Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
    • Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
    • It somewhere sighs and serves, and standing mute before
    • The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
    • His hours elect in choral consonancy.
    • But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
    • 10 With blending footprints tread at last the strand
      Added TextTogether tread at last the immortal strand
    • With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
    • Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
    • And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
    • “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”
    Image of page 65 page: 65
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.6cm.
    Manuscript Addition: 55 56
    Editorial Description: two numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    True Woman.

    I
    Scribe: DGR
    • To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
    • A bodily beauty more acceptable
    • Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
    • To be an essance more environing
    • Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
    • More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
    • To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
    • That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!
    • How strange a thing to be what Man can know
    • 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
    • Hides her soul's purest depth & loveliest glow;
    • Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
    • The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of green
    • That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.
    Image of page 66 page: 66
    Manuscript Addition: 57
    Editorial Description: two numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.6cm.
    True Woman . II
    Scribe: DGR
    • She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
    • And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
    • A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
    • Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
    • That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
    • And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
    • Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
    • For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.
    • Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
    • 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
    • Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
    • Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
    • Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
    • The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

    Image of page 67 page: 67
    Manuscript Addition: 52 55
    Editorial Description: two numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    True Woman. III
    Scribe: DGR
    • If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
    • (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
    • With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
    • True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung,
    • Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
    • Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
    • About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
    • Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.
    • The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
    • 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
    • Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
    • Even yet those lovers who have treasured still
    • This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
    • To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

    Image of page 68 page: 68
    Manuscript Addition: 59
    Editorial Description: number written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph copy, heavily corrected; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    Love's Last Gift
    Scribe: DGR
    • Love held to me to his singer held a glistening laurel leaf,
    • And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
    • Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
    • And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
    • Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
    • Victorous Summer; yea aye, and 'neath warm sea
    • Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
    • Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.
    • All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
    • 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
    • But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
    • From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
    • Only this laurel dreads no winter days;
    • It is my last gift, brother; sing my praise.”
    • Added TextTake my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”
    • Take my last gift, for thou hast sung my praise
    • O singer of my
    Image of page 69 page: 69
    Manuscript Addition: 59
    Editorial Description: number written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Love's Last Gift
    Scribe: DGR
    • Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
    • And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
    • Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
    • And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
    • Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
    • Victorous Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
    • Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
    • Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.
    • All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
    • 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
    • But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
    • From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
    • Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
    • Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”

    Image of page 70 page: 70
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Part II


    Change and Fate
    Image of page 71 page: 71
    Manuscript Addition: 80 60
    Editorial Description: two numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    Note: corrected draft holograph; size: 22.2x17.3cm.
    Evolved Unlikeness.
    Added TextTransfigured Life.
    Scribe: DGR
    • As growth of form or momentary glance
    • In a child's features will recall to mind
    • The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
    • Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
    • And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
    • The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
    • And Till in the blended likeness now we find
    • A separate man's or woman's countenance:—
    • So in such wise So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
    • 10 Song's Its very parents, 'neath his power evermore expand
    • To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain symbolled growth fullgrown birth remain,
    • By Art's transfiguring essance subtly spann'd;
    • And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
    • There comes the [?] sound as of abundant rain.

    Image of page 72 page: 72
    Manuscript Addition: 60
    Editorial Description: number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The title of the second section of the sonnet sequence is written above the title of the sonnet.
    Part II. Change and Fate


    Sonnet 60 LX

    Transfigured Life
    Scribe: DGR
    • As growth of form or momentary glance
    • In a child's features will recall to mind
    • The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
    • Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
    • And yet, as childhood's years & youth's advance,
    • The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
    • Till in the blended likeness now we find
    • A separate man's or woman's countenance:—
    • So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
    • 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
    • To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
    • By Art's transfiguring essance subtly spann'd;
    • And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
    • There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

    Image of page 72v page: 72v
    Manuscript Addition: Transfigured
    Editorial Description: DGR script of half of the title of “ Transfigured Life”.
    Note: this verso page is otherwise blank; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    Image of page 73 page: 73
    Manuscript Addition: D G Rossetti
    Editorial Description: DGR's signature below the poem
    Manuscript Addition: Sonnet LXI
    Editorial Description: Written in another hand beside DGR's original title.
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 17.8x11.3cm.
    The Song-Throe
    Scribe: DGR
    • By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
    • O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
    • Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
    • Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
    • Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
    • Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
    • Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst & sigh,
    • That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
    • The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
    • 10 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
    • Fledges his shaft: to no transferred august control
    • Of thy skilled hand 's skill his quivered store he gave:
    • But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
    • The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
    Image of page 74 page: 74
    Manuscript Addition: 81 61
    Editorial Description: two numbers written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    The Song-Throe
    Scribe: DGR
    • By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
    • O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
    • Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
    • Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
    • Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
    • Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
    • Than the d Dead s Sea for throats that thirst & sigh,
    • That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
    • The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
    • 10 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
    • Fledges his shaft: to no august control
    • Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
    • But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
    • The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

    Image of page 75 page: 75
    Manuscript Addition: 60 64 62
    Editorial Description: three numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.3cm.
    The Soul's Sphere
    Scribe: DGR
    • Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
    • Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre
    • Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
    • Who hath not yearned & fed his heart with thee?
    • Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
    • Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
    • Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . .
    • Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!
    • What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
    • 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
    • Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
    • Visons of golden features: or that last
    • Wild pageant of the accumulated past
    • That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

    Image of page 76 page: 76
    Manuscript Addition: 63 67 70
    Editorial Description: Three numbers written on the manuscript. Numbers 63 and 67 appear to be in DGR's hand.
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two cross lines.
    Note: Corrected holograph copy, cancelled; size: 21.8x17.7cm.
    For Answer
    Added TextInclusiveness
    Scribe: DGR
    • The changing guests, each in a different mood,
    • Sit at the roadside table and arise:
    • Are not their lives and thy life And every life among them, in likewise,
    • Each Is a soul's board set daily with new food. ?
    • What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
    • How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
    • Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
    • Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
    • May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
    • 10 In separate living souls , for joy , for and or pain?
    • Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
    • Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
    • And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
    • Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

    Image of page 76v page: 76v
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with three cross lines
    Note: Corrected holograph copy, possibly draft; size: 21.8x17.7cm.
    On the “Vita Nuova” of Dante
    Scribe: DGR
    • As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
    • And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
    • And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
    • And the mild fire of precious life grow wax warm;—
    • So I, long bound within the mystic threefold charm
    • Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
    • Had questioned of the passionate attitude
      Added TextHad marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
    • How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.
    • At length within this book I found express pourtrayed
    • 10 The first young image of that Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
    • But And simple like a child; by with whose clear aid
    • I understood. To such a child as this,
    • Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
    • Offence: “for lo! of such my kingdom is.”
    Image of page 77 page: 77
    Manuscript Addition: 63 64
    Editorial Description: two numbers written on the manuscript not by DGR.
    Manuscript Addition: or Inclusiveness
    Editorial Description: alternate title added at the top of the page
    Note: corrected holograph fair copy; size: 21.8x17.8cm.
    For Answer —

    ( Sonnet)
    Scribe: DGR
    • The changing guests, each in a different mood,
    • Sit at the roadside table and arise.
    • Are not their lives and thy life, in likewise,
    • Each a soul's board set daily with new food?
    • What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
    • How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
    • Or thought, when as his own mother kissed his eyes,
    • Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
    • May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
    • 10 In seperate living souls for joy, and for pain?
    • Yea Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
    • Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
    • And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
    • Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

    Image of page 78 page: 78
    Manuscript Addition: 60 62 64
    Editorial Description: three numbers not by DGR written on the manuscript
    Manuscript Addition: heart-pulse yearning hungry ever holds dear
    Editorial Description: DGR's alternate possible readings, at foot of the MS; their placement within the text is uncertain. The alternate reading for line 9, placed at the foot of the page just above this sequence of variants, is specifically linked by DKG to line 9, but these other variants have indeterminate references—though reasonable surmises might be made.
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The variant for line 9 is at the bottom of the page.
    Ardour and Memory.
    Scribe: DGR
    • The cuckoo-throb, the first heartbeat of the Spring;
    • The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
    • Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
    • The summer clouds that visit every wing
    • With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
    • The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
    • 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
    • While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—
    • These ardour loves, These pleasure etc. and memory: and when flown
    • 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
    • The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
    • Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
    • Shall Will flush all ruddy when though the rose is be gone;
    • With ditties and with dirges infinite.

    Image of page 79 page: 79
    Editorial Description: Text cancelled with two cross lines
    Note: Holograph fair copy, cancelled; size: 21.8x17.3cm.
    Known in Vain Work & Will
    Scribe: DGR
    • As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
    • Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
    • The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
    • Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
    • With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
    • Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
    • In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
    • Together, within hopeless sight of hope
    • For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
    • 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
    • After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
    • Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
    • Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
    • Follow the desultory feet of Death?

    Image of page 79v page: 79v
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 21.8x17.3cm.
    Manuscript Addition: or Flammia Flammifera
    Editorial Description: written and cancelled at top of page.
    Manuscript Addition: flammifer flammifer flamm?
    Editorial Description: written and cancelled at base of page
    Flamminia Flammifera
    Scribe: DGR
    • O thou who at Love's hour unswervingly compassionately ecstatically
    • Unto my lips dost evermore present,
    • The body and blood of Love in Sacrament;
    • Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
    • The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
    • Who without word in each pulse without speech hast owned him, and, intent
    • Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
    • And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—
    • O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
    • 10 And what to him Love the glory,—when the whole
    • Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim goal shoal
    • And weary water of the place of sighs,
    • And there dost work Love's wonder deliverance, as thine eyes
    • Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

    Image of page 80 page: 80
    Manuscript Addition: 66
    Editorial Description: number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph copy with corrections; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    The Heart of the Night
    Scribe: DGR
    • From child to youth; from youth to weary wavering arduous man;
    • From lethargy energy to fever of the heart;
    • From faithful life to mouldering dream-dowered days apart;
    • From doubt to dread trust to doubt; from dread doubt to bale and brink of ban;—
    • Thus much of change in thy one swift cycle ran
    • Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
    • Accept her primal immortality,—
    • The flesh that dust wherein its course began?
    • O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
    • 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
    • Even still yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
    • That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
    • The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
    • This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!
    Image of page 81 page: 81
    Manuscript Addition: 73a 66
    Editorial Description: two numbers written on manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.1x17.4cm. The variant line 8 is added at the foot of the page.
    The Heart of the Night
    Scribe: DGR
    • From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
    • From energy to fever of the heart;
    • From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
    • From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
    • Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
    • Till now. Alas! the soul—how soon must she
    • Accept her primal immortality,—
    • The flesh that dust wherein its course began?
    • Added TextThe flesh resume its dust whence it began
    • O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
    • 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
    • Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
    • That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
    • The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
    • This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

    Image of page 82 page: 82
    Manuscript Addition: 66 67
    Editorial Description: Two numbers written on the manuscript, 67 by DGR.
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled by two cross lines
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size:21.9x17.3cm.
    The Landmark
    Scribe: DGR
    • Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
    • Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
    • But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
    • In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
    • (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
    • Was that my point of turning?— I did think I had thought
    • Added TextThe stations of my course should rise unsought,
    • Proud [?] should mark my stations, link with link
    • Proud [?] the stations of my should link
    • As High altar-stone or ensigned citadel.
    • But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
    • 10 And thirst to drink when now next I reach the spring
    • Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
    • Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
    • As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
    • That the same goal is still on the same track.

    Image of page 82v page: 82v
    Editorial Description: Crosshatch doodle at lower left
    Note: Holograph fair copy, corrected: size:21.9x17.3cm.
    Death-in-Love
    Scribe: DGR
    • There came an image in Life's retinue
    • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
    • Fair was the web, and sweetly nobly wrought thereon,
    • O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
    • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
    • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
    • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
    • When birth's harsh dark portal groaned and all was new.
    • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
    • 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
    • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
    • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
    • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
    • I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

    Image of page 83 page: 83
    Manuscript Addition: 68
    Editorial Description: Number written on lower left, not by DGR.
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected; size: 21.7x17.3cm.
    A Dark Day
    Scribe: DGR
    • The gloom which that breathes upon me with these airs
    • Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
    • Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
    • Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
    • Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
    • Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
    • Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
    • O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
    • How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
    • 10 On crosswebbed Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
    • Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
    • Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
    • Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
    • Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

    Image of page 83v page: 83v
    Manuscript Addition: 67
    Editorial Description: Number written on upper right of manuscript, not by DGR.
    Manuscript Addition: Of Life Love and Death: Sonnets
    Editorial Description: This is at the head of the manuscript and is cancelled. It connects the text here with the 1869 printing of sixteen sonnets of “ The House of Life.”
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two cross strokes
    Note: Holograph fair copy; size: 21.7x17.3cm. The right side of the page is slightly cropped.
    Broken Music
    Scribe: DGR
    • The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
    • Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
    • But breathless with averted eyes elate
    • She sits, with open lips and open ears,
    • That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts & fears
    • Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
    • A central prisoned moan for days, at length found tongue,
    • And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.
    • But now, whatever while the soul is fain
    • 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
    • The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
    • No breath of song,—thy voice alone is there,
    • O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
    • Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

    Image of page 84 page: 84
    Manuscript Addition: Autumn Idleness
    Editorial Description: Received title added to the page by Charles Fairfax Murray
    Manuscript Addition: Sevenoaks Nov. 1850
    Editorial Description: Added by DGR after the text of the sonnet
    Note: Holograph, heavily corrected copy; size: 17.9x11.4cm.
    A Sunny day

    at the close of Autumn.
    Scribe: DGR
    • This sunlight shames November where he grieves
    • In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
    • The day, though stem with stem be inter-run.
    • But with a blessing every hold receives
    • High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
    • The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
    • As if, being foresters of old, the sun
    • Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.
    • Here on some morn clear as a magic glass;
    • 10 Might Rosalind stand listening in the dew
    • Or earlier Griselda to field work pass
    • Yet not as sullen as that single yew
    • [?] I bring my shadows o'er the grass.
    • Added TextMight Chaucer stop to listen in the dew
    • Added TextOr earlier [???] to fieldwork pass
    • Added TextAnd here the lost hours the lost hours renew
    • Added TextWhile I still lead my shadow o'er the grass
    • Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.
    Image of page 85 page: 85
    Manuscript Addition: 30 50 70
    Editorial Description: Three numbers written on the manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: Holograph fair copy, with corrected title; size: 21.7x17.7cm.
    From the Hill-top
    Added TextThe Hill Summit
    Scribe: DGR
    • This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
    • In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
    • And I have loitered in the vale too long
    • And gaze now a belated worshipper.
    • Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
    • So journeying, of his face at intervals,—
    • Saw where the land to its horizon falls
    • Some fiery bush with coruscating hair.
    • And now that I have climbed & tread this height,
    • 10 I may lie down where all the slope is shade
    • And cover up my face and hair till night
    • With silence darkness; or may here be stayed
    • And see the gold air and the silver fade
    • And the last bird fly into the last light.

    Image of page 85v page: 85v
    Manuscript Addition: 29
    Editorial Description: Number written on the manuscript, not by DGR.
    Manuscript Addition: Or She hath the apple in her hand for thee
    Editorial Description: DGR's note and text in upper left corner indicating revision for line 1.
    Note: Holograph, heavily corrected copy; size: 21.7x17.7cm.
    Added TextVenus Verticordia

    (for a Picture)


    (Summer)
    Scribe: DGR
    • She hath it in her hand to give it thee the fruit within apple in her [?] hand for thee,
    • Or She hath the apple in her hand for thee
    • Yet questions in AndYet within almost in her heart to would hold it back;
    • She muses, with her eyes upon the track
    • Of some dazed moth or honey-seeking bee
      Added TextOf that which in thy spirit she can see.
    • Haply, “ He is as one of these Behold, he is at peace,” saith she;
    • “Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
    • That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
    • The wandering of his feet perpetually!”
    • A little space her glance is still and coy;
    • 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
    • Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
    • Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
    • And her far seas moan as a single shell,
    • And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

    Image of page 86 page: 86
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected; size: 18.1x11.5cm.
    The Man's Choice I.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
    • Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
    • Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
    • Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
    • May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high,
    • Till round the glass thy fingers look glow like gold.
    • Then both hands oer my forehead thou shalt fold
    • And listen to the silence going by.
    • Added TextWe'll hear no hours: thy song, while those are toll'd,
    • Added TextShall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
    • Wilt thou believe that O just conceive why there are really those,
    • 10 My own high-bosomed lady, who increase
    • Care, gold, and care, in search reach of our Love's [?] true wealth! ?
    • Eleven long days they toil; upon the twelfth
    • They die not, never having lived,—but cease;
    • And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

    Image of page 87 page: 87
    Manuscript Addition: 72 78
    Editorial Description: Two numbers written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph fair copy; size: 21.7x17.5cm.
    The Choice II.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Watch thou and fear; tomorrow thou shalt die.
    • Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
    • Is not the day which God's word promiseth
    • To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
    • Now while we speak, the sun sets forth: Can I
    • Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
    • Perchance even at the moment quickeneth
    • The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
    • Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
    • 10 And dost thou prate of that which man shall do?
    • Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
    • Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
    • Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
    • Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

    Image of page 87v page: 87v
    Note: Holograph fair copy; size: 21.7x17.5cm. There is a illegible word circled in the upper left corner.
    On the “Vita Nuova” of Dante
    Scribe: DGR
    • As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
    • And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
    • And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
    • And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:—
    • So I, long bound within the threefold charm
    • Of Dante's love sublimed to Heavenly mood,
    • Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
    • How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.
    • At length within this book I found pourtrayed
    • 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
    • And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
    • I understood. To such a child as this,
    • Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
    • Offence: ‘for lo! of such my kingdom is.’

    Image of page 88 page: 88
    Manuscript Addition: 73 79
    Editorial Description: Two numbers written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph fair copy, corrected; size: 21.7x17.5cm.
    The Choice III.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
    • Stretching thyself i' the sun upon the shore,
    • Thou say'st: “Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
    • Of all the his years, steeply, with pant and sigh,
    • Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
    • Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”
    • How should this be? Art thou then so much more
    • Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
    • Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
    • 10 Unto the horizon-brim look thou with me;
    • Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
    • Miles and miles distant though the horizon be,
    • And though thy thought sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
    • Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

    Image of page 88v page: 88v
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected; size: 21.7x17.5cm. There is an editorial mark indicating that the words "sedulous penury's" should be transposed to read "penury's sedulous".
    The Sun's Shame
    Scribe: DGR
    • Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
    • From life; and mocking pulses that remain
    • When the soul's death of bodily death is fain,
    • Honour unfound unknown, and honour found known unsought;
    • And sedulous penury's self-torturing thought
    • On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
    • And longed-for woman longing all in vain
    • For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
    • Beholding And wealth, & strength, & power, & pleasantness,
    • 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
    • None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
    • Beholding all I behold the sun confess
      Added TextBeholding these things, I behold no less
    • At The blushing morn and blushing eve the stress confess
    • Of The shame that loads the intolerable day.

    Image of page 89 page: 89
    Manuscript Addition: 47
    Editorial Description: Number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.9cm.
    Saint Luke the Painter.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
    • It was this Luke For he it was (the aged legends say,)
    • Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
    • Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
    • Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
    • How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
    • Are symbols also in a some deeper way,
    • She looked through these to God and was God's priest.
    • And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
    • 10And she sought shadows talismans, and had turned in vain
    • To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
    • Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
    • Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
    • Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

    Image of page 89v page: 89v
    Manuscript Addition: Mem by D. G. R. for picture / Virgin & Child / Angels holding branches of the tree of knowledge / [ ? ] / [ ? ] in background
    Editorial Description: notes by Charles Fairfax Murray on verso of manuscript of text of 2a-1849
    Note: size: 22.2x17.9cm.
    Image of page 90 page: 90
    Manuscript Addition: 75 77 74
    Editorial Description: three numbers cancelled, not by DGR, written on the manuscript
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 22.2x17.3cm.
    Old and New Art.


    I. St. Luke the Painter.
    Scribe: DGR
    • Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
    • For he it was (the aged legends say)
    • Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
    • Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
    • Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
    • How sky-breadth and field silence and this day
    • Are symbols also in some deeper way,
    • She looked through these to God & was God's priest.
    • And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
    • 10 And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
    • To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
    • Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
    • Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
    • Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

    Image of page 91 page: 91
    Manuscript Addition: 76 78 75
    Editorial Description: three numbers, cancelled, written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.2cm.
    Old and New Art II.



    Not as These
    Scribe: DGR
    • “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
    • When young, and the young painter, amid among men
    • At bay, where neither never pencil comes [?] neither nor pen,
    • And shut about with his own frozen breath.
    • To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
    • As singers,— only paint as painters,— proudly then
    • He turns in the cold silence; and again
    • Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.
    • And say that this is so, what follows it?
    • 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
    • These words were well; but they see on, and far.
    • Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
    • Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
    • Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”
    Image of page 92 page: 92
    Manuscript Addition: III. The Husbandman
    Editorial Description: title added on page above the manuscript, by Fairfax Murray
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 21.4x13.4cm.



    Old and New
    Scribe: DGR
    • Though God, as one that is an householder,
    • Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
    • Before the husk of darkness was well burst
    • Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
    • (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
    • Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
    • Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
    • Though God hath since found none such as these were
    • To do their work like them:—Because of this,
    • 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
    • Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
    • Who may be first by faith and will?—that his
    • Is not the hand which, after the set days ,
    • Shall give a future to their goodly past?
      Added TextAnd hours, shall give a future to their past?

    Image of page 92v page: 92v
    Note: Pencil Sketch, 21.4 x 13.4 cm., of Woman Standing Behind a Table ; her left hand carries a censer or perhaps a goblet.
     

    Woman Standing Behind a Table

    Figure: Pencil Sketch, 21.4 x 13.4 cm.



    Image of page 93 page: 93
    Manuscript Addition: 79 76
    Editorial Description: two numbers, cancelled, written on the manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.2cm.
    Old and New Art III.


    The Husbandman
    • Though God, as one that is an householder,
    • Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
    • Before the husk of darkness was well burst
    • Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
    • (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir
    • Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
    • Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
    • Though God hath since found none such as these were
    • To do their work like them :—Because of this
    • 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
    • Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
    • Who may be first by faith and will?— that yea, his
    • Is notThe hand which after the set appointed days
    • And hours shall give a Future to their Past?
    Image of page 94 page: 94
    Manuscript Addition: 76 77 78
    Editorial Note: three numbers, not by DGR, written on the manuscript.
    Manuscript Addition: Soul's Beauty
    Editorial Description: title added on page above the manuscript by Fairfax Murray
    Note: holograph fair copy; size: 21.8x16.9cm.
    Sibylla Palmifera


    (for a Picture)
    Scribe: DGR
    • Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
    • Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
    • Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
    • I drew it in as simply as my breath.
    • Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
    • The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
    • By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
    • The allotted bondman of her palm & wreath.
    • This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
    • 10 Thy voice & hand shake still,—long known to thee
    • By flying hair & fluttering hem,—the beat
    • Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
    • How passionately & unappeasably irretrievably,
    • In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

    Image of page 95 page: 95
    Manuscript Addition: 76
    Editorial Description: number written on the manuscript, not by DGR.
    Manuscript Addition: Body's Beauty
    Editorial Description: title added above manuscript by Fairfax Murray
    Note: holograph corrected fair copy; size: 21.9x17.4cm.
    Lady Lilith


    (for a Picture)
    Scribe: DGR
    • Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
    • (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
    • That, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive,
    • And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
    • And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
    • And, subtly of herself contemplative,
    • Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
    • Till heart & body and life are in its hold.
    • Rose, foxglove, poppy are her flowers; And for where
    • 10 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
    • And soft-shed fingers and soft sleep shall snare?
    • Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
    • Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
    • And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
    Image of page 96 page: 96
    Sonnet LXXIX

    The Monochord.
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
    • That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
    • And by instinct ineffable decree
    • Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
    • Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
    • That 'mid the tide of all emergency
    • Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
    • Its difficult eddies labour in the ground.
    • Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
    • 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
    • The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
    • That draws round me at last this wind warm space,
    • And in regenerate rapture turns my face
    • Upon the devious coverts of dismay?
    Image of page 97 page: 97
    Manuscript Addition: 80 79 80
    Editorial Description: three numbers, one obscure and all cancelled, written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    From Dawn to Noon
    Scribe: May Morris
    • As the child knows not if his mother's face
    • Be fair; nor if his elders yet can deem
    • What each most is; but as of hill or stream
    • At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
    • Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
    • Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
    • And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
    • In things long past new features now can trace:—
    • Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
    • 10 Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
    • And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
    • And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
    • Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
    • Those unknown things or these things overknown.
    Image of page 98 page: 98
    Manuscript Addition: 66 70 72 84 81
    Editorial Description: five numbers, all cancelled, one obscured, written on the manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: corrected by DGR; size: 22.2x17.4cm. The alternate version of line 12 is written below the main text.
    Memorial Thresholds
    Scribe: May Morris
    • What place so strange,—though unimagined/[?] unrevealàd snow
    • With unimaginable fires arise
    • At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
    • Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
    • Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
    • This is the very place which to mine eyes
    • Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
    • 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.
    • City, of thine a single simple door,
    • 10 By some new power reduplicate, must be
    • Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
    • Even with one figure presence filled, as once of yore:
    • Added TextEven with the presence filled which once it bore
    • Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
    • Thee and thy years and these my words and me.
    Image of page 99 page: 99
    Manuscript Addition: Hoarded Joy
    Editorial Description: Title corrected by Charles Fairfax Murray, added above the manuscript
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x18cm.
    Tree and Stream Joy Delayed Postponed Reserved
    Scribe: DGR
    • I said: “Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
    • Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
    • Yet it shall But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
    • Sees in the stream its own fecundity
    • And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
    • At heat's high the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
    • And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
    • And eat it from the branch & praise the tree?”
    • I say: “Alas! the our fruit hath wooed the sun
    • 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
    • Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
    • And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
    • Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
    • And the woods wail like echoes of from the sea.”
    • Added TextTill music fainted on &
    • Added TextOf autumn bid the drowsy forest dream
    • Added TextOf the sea's sorrow and wail in unison.
    Image of page 99v page: 99v
    Note: This page, the verso of “Hoarded Joy”, contains a version of the sestet of “Death's Songsters”. The word “against” is written above “along” in line 4. (See page image.)
    Scribe: DGR
    • The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
    • There where the sea-flowers screen the burial-caves
    • Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd
    • Till music sweetness failed along against the inveterate waves
    • Say, Song Soul, are songs of d Death no heaven to thee
    • Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?
    Image of page 100 page: 100
    Sonnet LXXXIII

    Barren Spring.
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
    • And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
    • And now before and now again behind
    • Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
    • So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
    • No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
    • With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
    • And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
    • Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
    • 10 This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
    • To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
    • Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
    • Nor gaze till on the year's last lily-stem
    • The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.
    Image of page 101 page: 101
    Printer's Direction: print this after Autumn Idleness page 156
    Editorial Description: DGR's note
    Note: Holograph fair copy, corrected; size: 22.2x17.9cm.
    Farewell to the Glen
    Scribe: DGR
    • Sweet stream-fed glen, why say “farewell” to thee
    • Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
    • The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
    • Nay, do thou rather say “farewell” to me,
    • For I Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
    • Than when, where other trees might shade & soothe
    • By other streams in fragrant days of youth,
    • The bliss of being sad made melancholy.
    • And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
    • 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
    • And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
    • In hours to come, than when an hour ago
    • Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
    • And thy breeze trees whispered what he feared to know.

    Image of page 101v page: 101v
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with five cross strokes
    Editorial Description: Two lines of illegible text written in the right margin.
    Note: Holograph draft copy, cancelled; size: 22.2x17.9cm.
    Stillborn Love
    Scribe: DGR
    Deleted Text
    • The hour which might have been yet might not be,
    • Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
    • Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
    • Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
    • Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
    • It somewhere sighs & serves, and mute before
    • The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
    • His hours elect in choral consonancy.
    • But lo! what wedded spirits souls now hand in hand
    • 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
    • With eyes where burning memory lights Love home.
    • Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
    • And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
    • I am your child: O parents, ye have come.
    Image of page 102 page: 102
    Manuscript Addition: 85 83
    Editorial Description: Two numbers added on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph corrected copy, possibly draft; size: 21.7x17.6cm.
    Vain Virtues
    Scribe: DGR
    • What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
    • Not one of all the sins, and each fair deed
      Added TextNone of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
    • Long firm, which Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
    • These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
    • Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
    • Together now, in shapely quivering close-drawn snake-bound shuddering sheaves
    • Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
    • Their refuse maidenhood abominable.
    • Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit,
    • 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
    • Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And as the fair
    • fouled wretches sink etc And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
    • To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
    • The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

    Image of page 102v page: 102v
    Manuscript Addition: 71
    Editorial Description: Number added on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 21.7x17.6cm.
    Placata Venere
    Scribe: DGR
    • So their lips drew asunder, with fierce sweet smart:
    • And like as the last slow sudden rain drops are shed
    • From sparkling eaves when all the short storm has fled,
    • So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
    • Then their close bosoms sundered at one start,
    • As when a flower bursts open on its bed
    • From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
    • Chirped at each other where they lay apart.
    • Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
    • 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
    • Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
    • Of watered light, and dull drowned waifs of day:
    • Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
    • He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

    Image of page 103 page: 103
    Manuscript Addition: 85
    Editorial Description: Number added on page above proof text, not by DGR
    Note: This is a proof page (numbered 227) from the Tauchnitz Edition of the 1870 Poems, with DGR's manuscript corrections; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    SONNET XXXIX.
    Added TextLXXXV


    VAIN VIRTUES.
    • What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
    • None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
    • Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
    • These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
    • Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
    • Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
    • Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom pit's pollution leaves
    • Their refuse maidenhood abominable.
    • Night sucks them down, the garbage tribute of the pit,
    • 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
    • Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
    • And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
    • To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier destined wife,
    • The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.
    Sig. 15*
    Image of page 104 page: 104
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two cross strokes.
    Manuscript Addition: 68
    Editorial Description: Number added to manuscript, not by DGR.
    Manuscript Addition: Design for the Magdalene crayon
    Editorial Description: Note added by Charles Fairfax Murray in reference to the sketch on the verso of the page.
    Note: Holograph fair copy, cancelled; size: 21.8x18cm.
    Lost Days
    Scribe: DGR
    Deleted Text
    • The lost days of my life until to-day,
    • What were they, could I see them on the street
    • Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
    • Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
    • Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
    • Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
    • Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
    • The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?
    • I do not see them here; but after death
    • 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
    • Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
    • “I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”—
    • “And I—and I—thyself!” (lo! each one saith,)
    • “And thou thyself to all eternity.”
    Image of page 104v page: 104v
    Editorial Note (page ornament): DGR's sketch for a picture
    Note: Pencil sketch, (size: 21.8 x18 cm.) depicting a woman nude to the waist and holding a censer at her left side. Charles Fairfax Murray's note on the other side of the leaf identifies this picture as a “Design for the Magdalene Crayon” but this identification seems wrong.
     

    Woman With Vessel

    Figure: Pencil Sketch, 21.8 x 18 cm.



    Image of page 105 page: 105
    Printer's Direction: print this after Retro Me Sathana Lost Days (page 81)
    Editorial Description: DGR's note for the printer, for the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets . The title “Lost Days” is substituted for the title “Retro Me Sathana” and page 81 substitutes for an obscured number
    Note: Holograph corrected fair copy; size: 22.1x17.5cm.
    Deadly Sweetness Death-Sweetness
    Added TextDeath's Songsters
    Scribe: DGR
    • When first that horse, within whose populous womb
    • The birth was Death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
    • Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
    • Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
    • She whispered, “Friends, I am here alone; come, come!”
    • Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
    • And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
    • His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.
    • The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
    • 10 Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
    • Till sweetness failed along the sapphire inveterate sea. . . .
    • Say, soul,— and doth no fatal song for us
    • Prove yet than all the seas any crown more rapturous,
    • No death's lip shame the cheek of victory?

    Image of page 106 page: 106
    Manuscript Addition: 88
    Editorial Description: Number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: fair copy, with note to the poem added later by DGR; size: 22.2x16.8cm.
    Heros Lamp *
    Scribe: May Morris
    • That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name tonight,
    • O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
    • Tomorrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
    • To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
    • Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
    • On ebbing storm & life twice ebb'd must break;
    • While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
    • Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.
    • That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
    • 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
    • Till some one man the happy issue see
    • Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
    • Which still may rest unfir'd; for mine theirs or thine,
    • O brother, what brought Love to thee or me them or thee?

    Transcribed Footnote (page 106):

    * It is said that, after the death of Leander and Hero, the

    signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the decree edict that

    no man should light it who would not say that unless his

    love had proved to be a happy one fortunate.

    Image of page 106v page: 106v
    Editorial Description: sonnet cancelled with four cross strokes
    Manuscript Addition: (lordship) triumph splendour quired chaunted carolled choired hymned lettered
    Editorial Description: DGR wrote out three alternates for lines 3 and 13 in the sonnet
    Note: cancelled holograph copy, with corrections; size: 22.2x16.8cm.
    John Keats
    Scribe: DGR
    • The weltering London ways where children weep,
    • Where And girls whom none call maidens laugh, and while where gain
    • Arrests men's steps to lordship or disdain
    • Added TextAllures men's hurrying steps, their loss to attain:
    • Added Text
    • . . . . . laugh; the lane
    • Between the hospital beds of moaning pain:
    • The brink of Castaly bright Castalian brink, and Latmos' steep:—
    • Such were his paths, till deeper & more deep
    • He trod the sands of Lethe, and his brain,
    • Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
    • Drowsed where the shadows of dead Rome wrap his sleep.
    • O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
    • 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
    • Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
    • To us thou leav'st this fragrance, and a name
    • Not writ but quired choir'd rumoured in water, where while thy fame
    • Echoes along Time's flood for evermore.
    (lordship)

    >triumph

    splendour
    (quired)

    chaunted

    carolled

    [?]
    choir'd

    hymned

    lettered

    Image of page 107 page: 107
    Manuscript Addition: 89
    Editorial Description: number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Manuscript Addition: [???]
    Editorial Description: a series of very faint and unreadable scripts appear at the foot of the page
    Note: holograph corrected copy; size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    The The Trees of the Garden
    Scribe: DGR
    • Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; & ye
    • Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
    • And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
    • A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
    • Of some inexorable irrevocable supremacy
    • Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
    • From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
    • Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
    • Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
    • 10 The upheaved storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown today
    • Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
    • Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
    • Those stars, that through his springtime/ [?] watch the oak
    • When e'er his gnarled boughs shrink shall hold their way
    • Added Text
    • Added TextThose stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
    • Their journey still when his gnarled boughs shrink with age.

    Image of page 108 page: 108
    Manuscript Addition: 90
    Editorial Description: Number written on manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: Holograph corrected copy; size: 21.9x17.4cm.
    “Retro me, Sathana!”
    Scribe: DGR
    • Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
    • Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
    • Is caught down from out his chariot by the hair,
    • So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
    • Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
    • Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
    • It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
    • Get thee behind me, Satan. Gilt and pearled Oft unfurled,
    • Thy speech is like the rich simoom which hath
    • Added TextThy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
    • 10 Within its vortex [?] and gold yet slays
      Added TextMuch mightiness of men to win thee praise.
    • [?] Oft unfurled,
    • Thy horrible/perilous wings shall beat & break like lath
    • Much strength of mightiness of mighty men to win thee praise
    • Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
    • Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
    • Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
    • Many years, many months, and many days.
    Image of page 108v page: 108v
    Manuscript Addition: 30
    Editorial Description: Number written on the manuscript, not by DGR.
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled by three cross strokes
    Note: Holograph copy, heavily corrected, then cancelled; size: 21.9x17.4cm.
    Secret Parting Moments/Loves
    Scribe: DGR
    • Because our talk had been of Love's control
    • And Hope's enthrallment and the face of Fate,
    • Her pitying kisses faltered at the gate
    • And her eyes dreamed towards a distant goal:
    • But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
    • Of Joy, which its own hours annihilate,
    • Her deep gaze hankered, thirstier than of late,
    • And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.
    • Thence in what years we wandered & how strove
    • 10 To build from those poor [?]ing hours up fire-tried hours [?] jealous the home
    • Where outcast lifelong memory yet should roam
    • They only know for whom the House of Love
    • Could [?] the still-seated secret of the grove
      Added TextCould [?] secret of the grove,
      Added Text[???]
    • Nor spire may reach/rise nor bell be heard therefrom.
    • Added TextThence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
    • Added TextTo build with fire-tried vows the perilous piteous home
    • Where outcast lifelong memory yet should roam
    • Added TextWhich memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,—
    • Added TextThey only know for whom the House of Love
    • Added TextIs the still-seated secret of the grove,
    • Added TextNor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.
    Image of page 109 page: 109
    Manuscript Addition: 89 91 65
    Editorial Description: Numbers written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with cross strokes
    Note: Holograph fair copy, corrected, then cancelled; size: 21.8x17.8cm.
    Lost on Both Sides
    Scribe: DGR
    • As when two men have loved a woman well,
    • Each hating each, and all in self deceit through Love's and Death's deceit;
    • Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
    • And the long pauses of this wedding-bell:
    • Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
    • At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
    • Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
    • The two lives left that most of her can tell:—
    • So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
    • 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
    • And Peace before their faces perished since:
    • So in through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
    • Where silence may not be, they They roam together now, and wind among
    • Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

    Image of page 109v page: 109v
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with cross strokes
    Note: Holograph copy, corrected, then cancelled; size: 21.8x17.8cm. DGR dates the poem at the end:“Dies Atra 1st May 1869.”
    Love-in-Death
    Added TextDeath-in-Love
    Scribe: DGR
    • There came an image in Life's retinue
    • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
    • [?] he spread it in the Sun
      Added TextFair was the web, and well pourtrayed thereon,
    • Bright was the web and sweet the wind it blew
    • One soul sequestered face's form and hue
      Added TextO soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
    • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
    • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
    • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
    • When birth's dark harsh portal groaned and all was new.
    • When shuddering portals groaned & birth won through.
    • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
    • 10 The banner round its staff, to swath furl and cling,—
    • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
    • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
    • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
    • Look [?] and thine for I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

    Image of page 110 page: 110
    Manuscript Addition: 92
    Editorial Description: Number written on manuscript, not by DGR
    Note: Holograph fair copy; size: 17.9x11.1cm.
    The Sun's Shame
    Scribe: DGR
    • Beholding youth & hope in mockery caught
    • From life; and mocking pulses that remain
    • When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
    • Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
    • And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
    • On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
    • And longed-for woman longing all in vain
    • For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
    • And wealth, and strength, & power, & pleasantness,
    • 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
    • None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
    • Beholding these things, I behold no less
    • The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
    • The shame that loads the intolerable day.

    Image of page 111 page: 111
    Manuscript Addition: To follow the one in vol.
    Editorial Description: DGR's note, cancelled; the reference is to the companion sonnet, which was published alone in the 1870 volume of DGR's Poems .
    Manuscript Addition: 93 94
    Editorial Description: Numbers written on manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: Holograph copy, heavily corrected; size: 22.2x17.4cm.
    The World's Soul
    Added TextThe Sun's Shame II.
    Scribe: DGR
    • As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
    • Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
    • May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,—
    • “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
    • Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;”—
    • Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
    • And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
    • The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—
    • Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
    • 10 Perchance one hour must cry: “Woe's me, for whom
    • Added TextInveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
    • Dread change portends the irrevocable doom
    • Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
    • While thou even as of yore art journeying,
    • All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”

    Image of page 112 page: 112
    Manuscript Addition: 94 92
    Editorial Description: Two numbers written on manuscript, not by DGR.
    Note: Holograph corrected fair copy; size: 22.2x17.3cm.
    Michael Angelo's Kiss
    Scribe: DGR
    • Great Michel Angelo, with age grown bleak,
    • And uttermost labours, having wholly said once o'ersaid
    • All grievous memories on his long life shed,
    • This worst regret to one true heart could speak;—
    • That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
    • He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
    • His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,—
    • Her dear pale lips he kissed not, but her cheek.
    • Added TextHer hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.
    • O Buonarruoti,—good at the Sun's wheels Art's fire-wheels
    • 10 That guides his To urge her chariot!— even thus the Soul,
    • Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
    • Earns oftenest but a little: oftenest her appeals
    • Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
    • What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

    Image of page 113 page: 113
    Manuscript Addition: 64 95
    Editorial Description: Two numbers written on manuscript, not by DGR.
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with cross strokes
    Manuscript Addition: The vase of Life
    Editorial Description: This title added later by Charles Fairfax Murray
    Note: Holograph, corrected fair copy, cancelled; size: 21.8x17.5cm.
    Run and Won
    Scribe: DGR
    • Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
    • He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
    • And all its sides already understands.
    • There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
    • Whose road runs far by sands & fruitful space;
    • Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
    • Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
    • A youth, stands somewhere [?] crowned, with silent face.
    • And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
    • 10 With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
    • With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
    • And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
    • Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
    • Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

    Image of page 113v page: 113v
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two strokes
    Note: Holograph copy corrected; size: 21.8x17.5cm.
    A Superscription
    Scribe: DGR
    • Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
    • I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
    • Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
    • Cast up thy Life's embittered leaves foam- covered fretted feet between;
    • Unto thine eyes the glass where life that is seen
    • Which once had its Life's Love's own form had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
    • Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
    • Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
    • Mark me, how still I am: but if should there dart
    • 10 One moment through thy soul the sweet soft surprize
    • Of that soft wing ed Peace which [?]/bears the sleep lulls the breath of sighs,—
    • Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
    • Thy visage to the mine ambush at the thy heart
    • Made Held Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
    Image of page 114 page: 114
    Note: size: 22.2x17.5cm.
    Life the Beloved
    Scribe: May Morris
    • As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
    • Somewhile unto thy sight must needs have perchance hath been
    • Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
    • In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
    • As thy love's death-bound features never dead
    • To memory's glass return, but contravene
    • Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween,
    • Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—
    • So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
    • 10 Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
    • Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
    • Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
    • Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
    • And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.

    Image of page 115 page: 115
    Manuscript Addition: see [?] of Sonnet xcv MS for original MSS
    Editorial Description: Note by Fairfax Murray
    Sonnet XCVII

    A Superscription.
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
    • I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
    • Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea shell
    • Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
    • Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
    • Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
    • Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
    • Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
    • Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
    • 10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
    • Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,—
    • Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
    • Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
    • Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
    Image of page 116 page: 116
    Sonnet XCVIII

    He and I.
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • Whence came his feet into my field, and why?
    • How is it that he sees it all so drear?
    • How do I see his seeing, and how hear
    • The name his bitter silence [?] knows it by?
    • This was the little fold of separate sky
    • Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere
    • Drew living light from one continual year:
    • How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?
    • Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
    • 10 With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
    • A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary:
    • And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
    • Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,
    • Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.
    Image of page 117 page: 117
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two cross strokes
    Note: Holograph corrected copy, cancelled; 21.8x17.2cm.
    Newborn Death
    Scribe: DGR
    • Today Death seems to me a newborn an infant child
    • Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
    • Has set to grow my friend & play with me;
    • If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
    • To find no terrors in a face so mild,
    • But made [?] with fatality
      Added TextIf haply so my weary heart might be
    • May never any more be moved to flee
      Added TextUnto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
    • From those now [?] eyes grown wide and wild.
      Added TextO Death, before resentment reconcil'd.
    • How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
    • 10 Still a young child's with mine , ? —or wilt thou stand
    • Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
    • What time with thee at length indeed I reach the strand
    • Of that the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
    • And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

    Image of page 117v page: 117v
    Editorial Description: Sonnet cancelled with two cross strokes
    Note: Holograph copy, heavily corrected
    II
    Scribe: DGR
      Added Text
    • And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss by whom such artifice the lady of all bliss,
    • With whom when these our hearts beat full & fast
    • Added TextWith whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
    • I [?] wandered till the haunts of men were past,
    • And in rich fair places found all bowers amiss
    • Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
    • While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
    • Ah! Life, and must I have from thee at last
    • No smile to greet me & no babe but this?
    • Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
    • 10 Blew like a flame & blossomed like a wreath;
    • And Art, whose eyes made glance shaped God & formed him fair;
    • Added Text
    • whose eyes were as God's skies laid bare;
    • whose eyes were worlds by God found fair;
    • whose [?] glance met God's and formed them Him fair;
    • whose wondering eyes made wondrous fair
    • Added Textwith wondrous wondering eyes most fair
    • with wondrous eyes of wondering prayer
    • whose glance shaped gods and formed them fair
    • These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
    • With heart-locked hands [?] locked [?] neck-twined arms , as oft we watched them there:
    • And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?
    Image of page 118 page: 118
    Sonnet C.

    Newborn Death II
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
    • With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
    • I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
    • And in fair places found all bowers amiss
    • Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
    • While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
    • Ah! Life, and must I have from thee at last
    • No smile to greet me and no babe but this?
    • Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
    • 10 Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
    • And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair:
    • These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
    • With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there;
    • And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?
    Image of page 119 page: 119
    Sonnet CI.

    The One Hope.
    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray
    • When vain desire at last and vain regret
    • Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
    • What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
    • And teach the unforgetful to forget?
    • Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
    • Or may the soul at once in a green plain
    • Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
    • And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?
    • Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
    • 10 Between the scriptured petals softly blown
    • Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,—
    • Ah! let none other alien spell soe'er
    • But only the one Hope's one name be there,—
    • Nor less nor more, but even that word alone.

    Electronic Archive Edition: 1
    Source File: 44-1869.fizms.rad.xml
    Copyright: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge