Introduction
The 1870 constitution of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
comprised two parts, the first
<xref doc="a.44a-1869.raw">Sonnets</xref>
section, the
second this section of eleven Songs. DGR did not
arrive at this structure for the 1870
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">House of Life</xref>
until quite late in the
prepublication process—in fact, in the proofs
for the first edition,
which were pulled around 1 March 1870. The distinct section
of Songs thus evolved during the three months between the
Second Trial book, printed at
the end of November 1869, and the proofs for the first edition. To that point
the eleven songs that came to make up this section were mixed together under
the general heading
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">Sonnets and Songs Towards a Work to be called <title level="wrk">The House of Life
.
Baum is the only critic to comment on the poems as a group
(see
Poems, Ballads, and Sonnets
152n
): “They were composed at different times and
seem to have little unity as a group. The kinship of some of them with
the early poems of Morris and Swinburne, both in tone and in technique,
is easily recognizable, but it would be difficult to say in any one
instance which poet taught the other. Each poem is at least as much a metrical study as a thematic exercise or personal expression.”