Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Silent Noon (draft, Rosenbach Library)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1871
Type of Manuscript: holograph draft
Scribe: DGR

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

Image of page [1] page: [1]
Silence
  • Your hands lie open in the long deep grass
  • And the sweet points look through like rosy blooms:
  • All round The waving meadow pasture gleams & glooms
  • Neath billowing skies that scatter & amass.
  • All round About us twain, far as the eye can pass,
  • Are golden king cup fields with silver edge
  • Where the cow parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
  • 'Tis visible silence, still as of the still hour-glass.
  • Think through this silence how when we are old,
  • 10We two shall think upon this place & day,
  • The beauty around us & the beauty above,
  • And each of the other's heart And harbour in our hearts And clasp unto our hearts, when tempests lour
  • This close-companioned inarticulate hour
  • When twofold silence was the song of love.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: Digital images courtesy of the Rosenbach Library.