Introduction
This is a volume of fair copied manuscript texts that DGR
gave to Jane Morris as a gift in 1874. The material is arranged in the
book in two sections, with each section forming an integral unit that
begins at either end. The most important of these two
parts is the material at the front end—a collection of thirty
works, including twenty-eight sonnets and two songs (or lyrics), all
written to and about Mrs. Morris. All these
works are “love poems”, and in this respect they are
unlike the heterogeneous group of texts that he copied into the same
notebook but at the other end, separated off from this group .
The front section of love poems appear in the following order:
“Heart's Hope
”
;
“Love Enthroned
”
;
“Through Death to Love
”
;
“Love's Fatality
”
;
“Hope Overtaken
”
;
“My Lady's Gifts
”
(received title,
“Her Gifts”);
“Genius in Beauty
”
;
“Love's Pageant
”
(received title,
“Beauty's Pageant”);
“Between Kisses
”
(received title,
“Mid-Rapture”);
“Threefold Homage
”
;
“The Dark Glass
”
;
“Love's Compass
”
(received title,
“Heart's Compass”);
“Lovelight
”
(received title,
“Soul-Light”);
“Love-Measure
”
(received title,
“Equal Troth”);
“Heart's Haven
”
;
“Without Her”
;
“Love's Antiphony
”
(received title,
“Youth's Antiphony”);
“The Lovers' Walk
”
;
“The Moonstar
”
;
“Love and Hope
”
;
“At Last
”
;
“Cloud and Wind
”
;
“Spring Tribute
”
(received title,
“Youth's Spring-Tribute”);
“Venus Victrix
”
;
“The Love Lamp
”
(received title,
“The Lamp's Shrine”);
“Severed Selves”
(here titled “Between Meetings”);
“A Death-Parting”
(here titled “The Water Willow”);
“Parted Presence”
,
“Disio”
(here this sonnet and the next are copied together and numbered I and II in a pair titled “Disio e Compenso”);
“Compenso”
.
Of the twenty-eight sonnets in this group,
four were never published in DGR's lifetime
(“Threefold Homage”; “At Last”
“Diśo” “Compenso”). The remainder were
incorporated into the version the
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<hi rend="i">The House of
Life</hi>
</xref>
that DGR put together for his
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and Sonnets</hi>
</xref>
volume in 1881.
These thirty poems comprise a distinct version of DGR's
“House of Life Project”. The material stands
in a close historical relation to the 1870 version of “The House of
Life”, which DGR published in his
celebrated volume of
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<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
</xref>
the year
before he wrote most of these new works. Moreover, each of
these poetical gatherings includes both “Sonnets and
Songs” (using the descriptive term DGR gave in his 1870 volume). But there the similarities end, for this collection of texts is distinctive in its freedom from the darknesses that bewilder and trouble both the 1870 version of “The House of Life” project and the 1881 version.
That DGR wanted Mrs. Morris to receive this collection as a distinct unit of gratulent and celebratory sonnets is indicated by the other group of sonnets gathered into the manuscript book starting at the end. These are all poems that DGR worked on after he and Mrs. Morris broke up their love idyl in the autumn of 1871.
The poems that are grouped together in the section that begins at the end of the book include the following:
“Barcarola”
(here titled “Serenata”);
“The Sun's Shame II”
(here titled “World's Worth”);
“Memorial Thresholds”
;
“From Dawn to Noon”
;
“Life the Beloved”
;
“The Lady's Lament”
(here titled “A Lament”);
“Down Stream”
;
“Gioventu e Signoria”
(here titled “Giovenie e Signoria”);
“Youth and Lordship”
;
“Commandments”
(received title “Soothsay”);
“Sunset Wings”
;
“The Cloud Confines”
.