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Sig.
Editorial Note: The title is and notes below it are scripted in two different hands, neither DGR's.
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12 Sonnets
By
Dante G. Rossetti
 All from “The House of
Life”.
and other sonnets by D.G.R. —
28
leaves.
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Editorial Note: The manuscript was printer's copy for the text in DGR's 1861 volume of
translations. The paper is pale blue and measures 7 7/8 x 10 7/8 in.
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Guido Cavalcanti
11
Sonnet
xxx
Of his Lady and her companions
xxx
To his Lady Joan, of Florence
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Flowers hast thou in thyself, and foliage,
And what is good, and what is glad to see;
The sun is not so bright as thy visàge;
All is stark naught when one hath look'd on thee;
There is not such a beautiful personage
Anywhere on the green earth verily:
If one fear love, thy bearing sweet & sage
Comforteth him, and no more fear hath he.
Thy lady friends and maidens ministering
10 Are all, for love of thee, much to my taste
And much I pray the e
m that in everything
They honour thee even as thou meritest
And have thee in their gentle harbouring.
Because among them all thou art the best.
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Editorial Note: Library of Congress seal
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| Editorial Note: The note is by Charles Augustus Howell
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M.S.S.
Sonnet from Guido Cavalcanti
20
D.G. Rossetti.
“Dante and his Circle.”
Page 132.
original M.S.S. as returned from the printer to D.G. Rossetti
To George Barnett Smith
From his friend
Charles A. Howell
8. September 1879
See Collected Works, 2 vols, 1190
vol 2, page 117
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Sonnet XXIV
Pride of Youth
Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
The dead, but little in his heart can find,
Since without need of thought to his clear mind
Their turn it is to die and his to live: —
Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
Along his eddying wings/[?] the auroral wind,
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
There is a change in every hour's recall,
10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
In the same day with the first corn-poppy.
Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall
Even as the beads of a told rosary!
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| Manuscript Addition |
| Transcription: |
(Printed Heart's) |
| Description: |
Annotation to the title by another hand, in pencil |
Sonnet XXVII
Love's Compass
Sometimes though seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
Where eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar
Being of its furthest first oracular; —
The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world g a gainst thy heart.
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| Manuscript Addition: Printing Directions |
| Transcription: |
Johnson |
| Description: |
Apparently a publisher's note assigning the text to a certain printer |
Sonnet XXXII
XXIX
The Moonstar
Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
Because my lady is more lovely still.
Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
Of delicate life Love labours to assess
My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
But us that beauty's sovereign votaress.”
Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
An emulous star too near the moon will ride, —
Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
Lady, not thou but she was glorified.
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| Manuscript Addition: Printing Directions |
| Transcription: |
193 O
Skinner
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| Description: |
Apparently a publisher's note assigning the text to a certain printer |
Sonnet XXXI
Her Gifts.
High grace, the dower of queens; such therewithal
Some wood-born wonder sweet simplicity;
A glance like water trimming with the sky
Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth entrhall
The heart; a month whose passionate forms imply
All music and all silence held thereby;
Deep locks, the brow's embowering coronal;
A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine,
10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign: —
These are her gifts, as tongue may tell thou o'er.
Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.
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Sonnet XI
Severed Selves.
Two separate divided silences,
Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas: —
Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
10 Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam? —
An hour how slow to come, how quickly past, —
Which beams and fades, and only leaves at last,
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
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Sonnet XLII
Hope Overtaken.
I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
Is passed at length; and garmented in green
Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day -
Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
On all that road our footsteps erst had been
Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
10 No eyes but hers, —O Love and Hope the same! —
Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!
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XLII
Hope Overtaken. (H. of L.)
I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
Once [illegible] has cleared;
Is passed at length; and garmented in green
Even as in days of yore thou standst today
Ah God! and save
but for lingering dull dismay,
On all the past
that road our footprints still
might have
erst had been
Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
O Hope of mine that hast the eyes I
whose eyes are living love,
10 No eyes but hers, —O Love & Hope the
same! —
Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
That warmed our feet scarce gleams
gilds our hair above.
O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!
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| Manuscript Addition: Printing Directions |
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ac. 2269 |
| Description: |
Apparently an archive notation by the library at the foot of the page. |
XII
The Lovers' Walk
Sweet twining hedgeflowers stirred
wind-stirred in no [illegible] wise
On their warm day; and hand that clings in hand:
Still glads; & meeting faces scarcely fanned:
An osin-odoured stream that draws the skies
Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:
Fresh hourly wonder o'er the summer laced
Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd
With one o'erarching heaven of smiles & sighs: —
Even such their path; till round the sunset hill
10 The wayward clouds of starlings, at wild play,
Sink deep in every copse, and to whirl away.
Oft ere they rest; and sun and soul are still: love's hour hath its fill:
Nor yet the/ shall shall yon gathering rooks that sail and soar
Seem to these hearts to cry, Farewell, No more!
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Sonnet XLIV
Cloud and Wind.
Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
Her warrant against all her haste might rue? —
Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?
And if I die the first, shall death be then
10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep? —
Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain,)
The hour when you too learn that all is vain
And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?
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Sonnet XLI
The Song-Throe.
By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
Except thy manifest heart;and save thine own
Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave
10 Of thine: Thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
Fledges his shaft: to no august control
Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
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Sonnet LXII
The Soul's Sphere.
Some prisoned moon in steep closed-fastnesses, —
Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun where pyre
Blazed with momentos memorable fire; —
Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
Conjectured in the lamentable night?.....
Lo! The soul's sphere of infinite images!
What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd space, —
Visions of golden futures: or that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
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Sonnet LXVI
LXIV
Ardour and Memory.
The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
The summer clouds that visit every wing
With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
While all the daughters of the daybreak sing: —
These ardor loves, and memory: and when flown
10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
Will flush all ruddy when the rose is gone;
With ditties and with dirges infinite.
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Sonnets LXXIV, LXXVI, LXXVI Old and New Art
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The texts of the three sonnets are fair copies made by DGR for the printing
of the poems in the 1881.
Poems
volume.
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Sonnets LXXIV, LXXVI, LXXVI
Old and New Art
I. St. Luke the Painter
Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands & pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
Are symbols also in some deeper way,
She looked through these to God and was God's priest.
And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
10 And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
Ere the night cometh and she may not work.
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II. Not as These
“I am not as these are,” the poet saith
When young, and the young painter, amid men
At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
And shut about with his own frozen breath.
To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
As singers,—only paint as painters,—then
He turns in the cold silence; and again
Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.
And say that this is so, what follows it?
10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
These words were well; but they see on, and far.
Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”
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III. The Husbandmen
Though God, as one that is an householder,
Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
Before the husk of darkness was well burst
Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
(Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
Though God has since found none such as these were
To do their work like them:—Because of this
10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
The hand which after the appointed days
And hours shall give a Future to their Past?
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Sonnet LXXXIV LXXI
Memorial Thresholds
What place so strange,—though unrevealèd snow
With unimaginable fires arise
At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
Lo! This is none but I this hour; and lo!
This is the very place which to mine eyes
Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.
City, of thine a single simple door,
10 By some new Power reduplicate, must be
Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
Thee and thy years and these my words and me.
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Sonnet LXXXIX
The Trees of the Garden.
Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
Of some inexorable supremacy
Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
From depth s to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
10 The storm-felled forest-trees mossgrown today
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.
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Sonnet XCVI
Life the Beloved.
As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
Somewhile unto thy night perchance hath been
Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
As thy love's death-bound features never dead
To memory's glass return, but can travail
Frail fugitive days, and always keep, I ween,
Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—
So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
10 Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger,
Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
Though pale she lay when in the winter grave
Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
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