The Portrait (fair copy manuscript, Ashmolean Museum): a Rossetti Archive Document Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 Reproduced with permission of The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. [Untitled] Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 fair copy single manuscript leaf DGR The Ashmolean Museum (Dept. of Western Art) unlined, unwatermarked Commentary
Introduction

The manuscript (received stanzas 6-9) is a single leaf that represents DGR's last addition to the poem he was constructing in October 1869 from the manuscript version that he had buried in his wife's grave in 1862. It follows upon and augments the corrected fair copy in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The stanzas are fair copied on one side of the leaf. A notation at the foot of the page shows that it was to be used as printer's copy for the second trial book.

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception History

Iconographic

Printing History

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

page 209 note to the printer about the page location of the text [Untitled fragment] And But when that hour my soul won strength For words whose silence wastes & kills, Dull raindrops smote us, & at length Thundered the heat within the hills. That eve at home I spoke those words again Beside the pelted window-pane; And there she hearkened what I said, With under-glances that surveyed The empty pastures blind with rain. Next day the memories of these things, Like leaves through which a bird has flown, Still vibrated with Love's warm wings; Till I must make them all my own And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease Of talk and sweet long silences, She stood among the plants in bloom At windows of a summer room, To feign the shadow of the trees. And as I wrought, while all above And all around was fragrant air, In the sick burthen of my love It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there Beat like a heart among the leaves. O heart that neither never beats nor heaves, In that one darkness lying still, What now to thee my love's great will Or the fine web the sunshine weaves? For now doth daylight disavow Those days,—nought left to see or hear. Only in solemn whispers now At night-time these things reach mine ear; When the leaf-shadows at a breath Shrink in the road, and all the heath, Forest and water, far and wide, In limpid starlight glorified, Lie like the mystery of death.