“Before April 1870“ (see Peatti, 6 ); but the sonnet was probably written in February, or perhaps January, 1870. It is one of the late additions to the proofs for the first edition, printed at the beginning of March.

The text as first set in type in the last proofs for the 1870 volume does not change thereafter. But the important pronouns in the first two lines came into the poem as revisions to the first draft, i.e., to the Troxell manuscript. (One other manuscript survives, a fair copy in the Fitzwilliam composite manuscript.)

The revisions in the Troxell MS are mostly in pencil and these were made sometime after the draft was first composed. But two are in ink (in lines 7 and 12) and these were made when the draft was produced. All of this work must have been done before the beginning of March 1870.

First printed around 1 March 1870 in the final proofs for the first edition of the 1870 . This is one of the “three new sonnets in the last set of proofs” that he mentions in his letter to Alice Boyd of 22 March 1870 (see Fredeman, , 70. 63 ). It is Sonnet XVI in the 1870 volume, and Sonnet XXXVI in 1881.

In the context of as a dramatic sequence, this sonnet inevitably recalls the “Donna della finestra” episode in Dante's (see DGR's translation of this famous episode). Dante's sorrow (over the death of Beatrice), being observed by the lady of the window, calls out her pity for him, and her sympathy leads him “often” to seek her out, to ease his sorrow. After writing two sonnets to her, however, Dante reflects critically on his behavior: “At length, by the constant sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked myself as a base person.” These reflections lead him to write another sonnet (: in DGR's translation, “The very bitter weeping that ye made”). This sonnet argues that the relationship between Dante and the “donna della finestra” “must not any way” function except to “recall each ancient sign/Of grief, and her for whom your tears were shed“ (lines 7-8). This famous moment in the Dantean myth cannot fail to complicate the way we read DGR's sonnet.

Baum says of this sonnet that “Here we meet for the first time unmistakably in the sequence the New Beloved. In the previous sonnets the Lady might be assumed to be Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, though I doubt if the assumption is always warranted” (see Baum, 115 ). DGR told Alice Boyd that the sonnet “refers to an actual love with a reminiscence of a former one” ( Fredeman, , 70. 70 ).

The sestet of the sonnet is recalling the exhumation of DGR's wife's body in October 1869; DGR wanted to recover the manuscript volume of his poems from the grave, as those were the only texts for a number of the poems he was planning to publish in the 1870 volume. Baum's note is to the point here: “Rossetti was not present at the disinterring of the manuscript in his wife's coffin, but it was reported to him that the hair remained unchanged after the seven years' burial” (Baum, , 115n ).

DGR has a note to the passage that is being recollected in his sonnet. The note speculates that the lady of the window is Gemma Donati, the poet's wife. In DGR's poetic sequence, of course, the figures of Beatrice and the “donna della finestra” are open to a completely reversed autobiographical reading. Equally to the point is DGR's general comment on interpretative method: “what I believe to lie at the heart of all true Dantesque commentary . . . is, the existence always of the actual events even where the allegorical superstructure has been raised by Dante himself”. That observation must always be taken into consideration when we read DGR's sonnet sequence as well, and not least of all in the case of this sonnet.

Baum, , 114-116 McGann, , 46-51passim WMR, , 206-207