The clocks are striking two. I seem to have chatted with you this past hour as of old. There
seems no further news, but it is a shame to send blank paper as far as Jerusalem, so I'll
finish with something of the class that usualy goes to Jericho: my last sonnet—not the best I
think of severaI I have done lately, my only poetic productions, save one ballad, for the last
two years or so: not the best, but the only one in my pocket book. Here it is, and may God
bless you, dear Hunt, and believe me
Yours affectionately,
D. G. Rossetti
The gloom which breathes upon me with these airs
Is like the drops that strike the traveller's brow
Who knows not, darkling
hastening, if they menace now
Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
Ah! bodes this hour its harvest of new tares?
Or tells again but of the day whose plough
Sowed hunger since;—The night at last when thou,
O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
Lie here and there
Lie by Time's grace, till night & sleep may soothe.
Even as the thistle-down from pathsides dead
Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
Which, one new year, makes soft her marriage-bed.
The last simile is from what you told me as a fact common in parts of England.