Silent Noon (corrected draft, Rosenbach Library)Dante Gabriel Rossetti1Digital images courtesy of the Rosenbach Library.SilenceDante Gabriel Rossetti1871holograph corrected draftDGRDGRRosenbach LibraryExtra Satin4 7/16 x 7 1/8 in.This sonnet (as well as seven others) is written on paper identical
with the paper carrying the Rosenbach Library's fair copy of “Transfigured Life”.
Commentary
Introduction
This is one of the two earliest manuscripts of the poem, both having been scripteds in 1871. This text was copied directly after the other, the first
draft.
Textual History: Composition
Textual History: Revision
Production History
Reception History
Iconographic
Printing History
Pictorial
Historical
Literary
Translation
Autobiographical
Bibliographic
SilenceYour hands lie open in the long deeplow grass And the sweet points look through like rosy blooms: The waving meadow pasture gleams & glooms'Neath billowing skies that scatter & amass:All round us twain 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 hour-glass.Think through this silence how when we are oldold & grey,We two shall think upon this place and day, The beauty around us & the beauty above;Still clasping to our hearts, though tempests lourThis close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.