Letter to William Allingham, 23 January 1855, manuscript Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 Digital images courtesy of Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The prose parts of the letter are not in this document. They will be added later. Letter to William Allingham, 23 January 1855 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1855 January 23 fair copy DGR DGR Pierpont Morgan Library Commentary
Introduction

DGR included in this letter a fair copy of his poem “A Dark Day” (see Fredeman, <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> , II. 6-11 ).

Textual History: Composition

Composed shortly before DGR's letter to Allingham, as DGR indicates in the letter.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception History

Iconographic

Printing History

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Doughty and Wahl, <hi rend="i">Letters</hi> , I. 237-242. Fredeman, <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> , 55.4.

to me long ago, but not at all familiarly till now. I fancy one might read him much oftener and much later than Wordsworth than almost any one.

I must try & fill this paper. So I substitute one of my “clever” moments for the present helpless one & copy you my last sonnet.

The gloom which breathes upon me with these airs Is like the drops that strike the traveller's brow Who knows not, darkling, if they menace now Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears. Ah! bodes this hour its harvest of new tares? Or keeps remembrance of that day whose plough Sowed hunger since,—that night at last when thou, O prayer found vain! did'st fall from out my prayers? How prickly were the griefs, which yet how smooth, On cobwebbed hedgerows of this journey shed, Lie here and there till night & sleep may soothe, Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth, Which, one new year, makes soft her marriage bed.

Does it smack though of Tupper at all—it seems to, in copying. The last simile I heard as a fact common in some parts of the country.

Remainder of letter written vertically, bottom to top, along the left margin. DGR had no more writing space on the rest of the page.

I wish I could see you again; I really do. When is it to happen? Let us write again regularly, now that I feel rehabilité about the block.

Yours DG Rossetti