Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Love-Sweetness (revise Page Proofs, Princeton/Troxell collection)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1870 March
Printer: Strangeways and Walden
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
- Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
- About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
- In gracious fostering union garlanded;
- Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
- Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
- Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
- On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
- Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
- What sweeter than these things, except the thing
- 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet?—
- The full heart's confluent confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
- And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
- Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
- The breath of kindred plumes against its feet.
- I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
- Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
- And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
- Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
- And from one hand the petal and the core
- Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
- Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
- Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
- At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
- 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
- And as I took them, at her touch they shone
- With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
- And then Love said: ‘Lo! when the hand is hers,
- Follies of love are love's true ministers.’
- Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
- About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
- In gracious fostering union garlanded;
- Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
- Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
- Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
- On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
- Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
- What sweeter than these things, except the thing
- 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet ? :—
- The full heart's confluent fervour: the swift beat
- And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
- Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
- The breath of kindred plumes against its feet . ?
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
prin23309.rad.xml
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