Janet Camp Troxell's bookplate pasted down on inside front cover
Typed list of contents, each numbered by hand to the left.
Green Book
1 Words on the Window Pane
2 The last five from Trafalgar
3 During
Music
4 To P B Marston
5 For the Holy Family
6
Cassandra
7 Sudden Light
8 Spring See also Purple Book p. 2
9
The Church Porch
10 The Portrait
11 To Death of his Lady
Eleven Original Manuscript Sonnets by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Charles Fairfax Murray's notation
and ALS 1876 to Mrs. Summers
and 1 page “The Philosophy of Handwriting”
with DGR's pencil notes
Notation in unknown hand; the letter is not among the bound materials in the volume.
18 x 22 inches
ruled
white
<add>Words on the Window-pane</add>
<lb/>
<del>On an unfinished inscription<lb/>
scratched on a window-pane<lb/>
Words on the window-pane.</del>
Did she in summer write it, or in spring,
Or with this wail of autumn at her ears,
Or in some winter left among old years
Scratched it through tettered cark? A certain thing
That round her heart the frost was hardening
Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane
Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain,
For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting.
Howbeit, between this last word & the next
Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart,
And here at least the grace to weep: if she,
Rather, midway in her disconsolate text,
Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart
That thing which she had found man's love to be.
------------
blank page
18 x 11 cm
ruled
white
The Last <del>Five</del>
<add>Few</add> from Trafalgar <lb/>
<add>at the Anniversary Banquet</add>
<lb/> (21 Oct: <del>?</del>
<add>187*</add>)
In grappled ships around The Victory,
Five
Those boys did England's d
Duty with stout cheer,
While one dread truth was kept from every ear,
More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea:
For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he
Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer,
He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear,
Was passing from all life save Victory.
And round the old memorial board today,
Five
These greybeards—each a warworn British
Tar—
View through the mist of years that hour afar:
Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray,
The impassioned soul which on its radiant way
Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.
--------------
blank page
18.1 x 22 cm
ruled
white
During Music
O cool unto the sense of pain
That last night's sleep could not destroy!
O warm unto the sense of joy
That dreams its life within the brain!
What though I lean o'er thee to scan
The written music cramped and stiff?
'Tis dark to me as hieroglyph
On those weird bulks Egyptian.
But as from those, dumb now & strange,
A glory wanders on the earth,
Even so thy tones can call a birth
From these, to shake my soul with change.
O swift, as in melodious haste
Throb o'er the keys thy fingers small!
O soft as is the rise and fall
Which stirs that shade within thy breast.
--------------
Date wd be early say /51—MS c. /63
WMR's note on the date of the poem and the manuscript
18.1 x 22 cm
ruled
white
WMR notes: In Sharp's bk line 4 gives
the word sight. In MS in W's
possession
word is light. Is this WM's?
Janet Camp Troxell's note on the manuscript.
<hi rend="center">To Philip Bourke Marston,<lb/> inciting me to poetic work:</hi>
Sweet Poet, thou of whom these
these years that roll
Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn,
And by the darkness of thine eyes discern
How piercing was the sight within thy soul;—
Gifted apart, thou goest to the great goal,
A cloud-bound radiant spirit, strong to earn,
Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn
Vainly light-blest,—the Seër's aureole.
And doth thine ear, divinely dowered to catch
All spheral sounds in thy song blent so well,
Still hearken for my voice's slumbering spell
With wistful love? Ah! let the Muse now snatch
My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch
Thy veiled transfiguring sense's miracle.
--------------
C. 1879 a good specimen of handwriting
from that late date
WMR's note along left edge of the page
18.1 x 22 cm
ruled
white
<hi rend="center">For <lb/> The Holy Family, <lb/> by Michael Angelo, <lb/>in the National Gallery.*</hi>
------------
Turn not the prophet's page, O Son! He knew
All that thou hast to suffer, and hath writ.
Not yet thine hour of knowledge. Infinite
The sorrows that thy manhood's fate
lot must rue
And dire acquaintance of thy grief. That clue
Thy
The spirits of most
thy mournful ministerings
Seek through yon
the
scroll in silence. For these things
The angels have desired to look into.
Still before Eden waves the fiery sword,—
Her Tree of Life unransomed: whose sad Tree
Of Knowledge yet to growth of Calvary
Must yield its Tempter,—Hell the earliest dead
Of Earth resign,—and yet, O Son and Lord,
The Seed o' the Woman bruise the serpent's head.
-----------
† In this picture, the Virgin Mother is seen withholding from the
Child Saviour the prophetic writings in which his sufferings
are foretold.
Angelic figures beside them examine a scroll.
blank page
18.1 x 22 cm
ruled
white
<hi rend="center">Cassandra. <lb/> (<hi rend="u">Two Sonnets for a Design</hi>)
<lb/> 1</hi>
Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine arms
hands, and cry
From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.
What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.
---------------
* The subject shows Cassandra prophesying among her kindred, as Hector
leaves
them for his last battle. ?
They are on the platform of a fortress, from which the
Trojan
troops are marching out. Helen is arming Paris; Priam soothes Hecuba;
and Andromache holds the child in her arms
to her bosom.
blank page
17.5 x 21 cm
ruled
white
J ALLEN & SONS
SUPER FINE
<hi rend="center">Sudden Light</hi>
-------------
We
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet fresh
keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I do
may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your head
neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Before may be again!
Then, now:—perchance again!
O press mine eyes into your neck!
O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
Shall we not lie as we have lain
Thus for Love's sake,
And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?
-------------
blank page
16 x 21 cm
unruled
white
JOY[YNSON] 18[ ]
The line of text at the bottom of the page is part of the letter in which this
text of the poem was originally enclosed; a letter to DGR's mother of 20 May 1873.
<hi rend="center">Spring</hi>
----------------
Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing-fold,
And in the hollowed haystack at its side
The shepherd lies o' nights now, wakeful-eyed
At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.
The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old:
And near unpeopled streamsides, on the ground,
By her spring-cry the moorhen's nest is found,
Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
And chill the current where the young reeds stand
As green and close as the young wheat on land:
Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
Pledge to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour
Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.
I'll put some cuckoo-flowers
in,—light purple white
over
WMR's note on verso
Janet Camp Troxell's note
As printed—this must be the copy of the sonnet sent to R's
mother (Family Letters p.291) on 20/5/73— Hence the note at
close of
MS
2.5
Charles Fairfax Murray's note
16 x 21 cm
ruled
white
<hi rend="center">The Church Porch</hi>
Sister, first shake we off the dust we have
Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones
Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones
Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave,
Their trust abiding round them in the grave;
Whom painters paint for silent
visible orisons
And to whom sculptors pray in stone & bronze;
Their voices echo still like a spent wave.
Without here, the church-bells are but a tune,
And on the carven church-door this hot noon
Lays all its heavy sunshine here without:
But having entered in, we shall find there
Silence, and lighted candles
sudden dimness, and deep prayer,
And faces of crowned angels all about.
blank page
18.1 x 22.1 cm
ruled
white
<hi rend="center">The Portrait.</hi>
---------------
O Lord of all compassionate control,
O Love! let this my lady's picture glow
Under my hand to praise her name, and show
Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw
And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
The very sky and sea-line of her soul.
Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe throat
The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss,
The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
They that would look on her must come to me.
---------------
blank page
9 x 21 cm
unruled
white
<hi rend="center">To Death, of his Lady.<lb/> (Francois Villon, 1450)</hi>
---------------
Death, of thee do I make my moan,
Who hadst my lady away from me,
Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
Till with her life thou hast mine own,
For since that hour my strength has flown.
Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
Death?
Two we were, and the heart was one;
Which now being dead, dead I must be,
Or seem alive as lifelessly
As in the choir the painted stone,
Death!
---------------