Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree; Planted by Wm Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1869

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

Image of page [endpaper] page: [endpaper]
Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS

JAMES WISE

HIS BOOK

  • BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
  • WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
  • SOLACE OF SOLITUDE&
  • BONDS OF SOCIETY!
Image of page [ii] page: [ii]
On the Site

of

Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree

by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti


I

The Original Holograph Manuscript

Written in 1853

II

The Privately-Printed Leaflet

Issued in 1869





Image of page [1] page: [1]
ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY-TREE;

Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
  • This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
  • Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
  • Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
  • Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
  • Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
  • Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
  • Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
  • This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!
  • We'll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
  • 10 And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
  • For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
  • Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
  • Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
  • Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost.
Stratford-on-Avon.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 9-1853.blproof.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library