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The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Edited with Preface and Notes by William M. Rossetti: Revised and Enlarged Edition
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

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PRINCIPAL POEMS
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II.—MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
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VERSICLES AND FRAGMENTS
  
GOD'S GRAAL
  
[As much as in a hundred years, she's dead]
  
ON BURNS
  
THE ORCHARD-PIT
  
TO ART
  
FIOR DI MAGGIO
  
[“I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ”]
  
[As balmy as the breath of her you love]
  
[“Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies?”]
  
[If I could die like the British Queen]
  
[She bound her green sleeve on my helm]
  
[Where is the man whose soul has never waked]
  
[At her step the water-hen]
  
[Would God I knew there were a God to thank]
  
[I shut myself in with my soul]
  
[“I hate” says over and above]
  
[Do still thy best, albeit the clue]
  
[The bitter stage of life]
  
[The winter garden-beds all bare]
  
[Who shall say what is said in me]
  
[Who knoweth not love's sounds and silences?]
  
[Where the poets all—]
  
A BAD OMEN
  
[Even as the dreariest swamps, in sweet Springtide]
  
[Or reading in some sunny nook]
  
[Aye, we'll shake hands, though scarce for love, we two]
  
[And heavenly things in your eyes have place]
  
[Though all the rest go by—]
  
[What face but thine has taught me all that art]
  
[With furnaces]
  
[And love and faith, the vehement heart of all.]
  
[For this can love, and does love, and loves me. ]
  
[The forehead veiled and the veiled throat of Death.]
  
[Thou that beyond thy real self dost see]
  
[And plaintive days that haunt the haggard hills]
  
[To know for certain that we do not know]
  
[Think through this silence how when we are old]
  
[An ant-sting's prickly at first]
  
[And mad revulsion of the tarnished light.]
  
[His face, in Fortune's favours sunn'd]
  
[The glass stands empty of all things it knew.]
  
[O thou whose name, being alone, aloud]
  
[I saw the love which was my life flow past]
  
[Or give ten years of life's most bitter wane]
  
[And of the cup of human agony]
  
[Even as the moon grows clearer on the sky]
  
[(The Imperial Cloak—Paludamentum).]
  
MY LADY (Canzone)
  
LAST LOVE (Canzone)
  
[For the garlands of heaven were all laid by]
  
[The wounded hart and the dying swan]
  
[Within those eyes the sedulous yearning throe.]
  
[Ah if you had been lost for many years]
  
ON THE TWO BRIDAL-BIERS
  
[Fashioned with intricate infinity.]
  
[Ah dear one, we were young so long]
  
JOAN OF ARC
  
[The tombless fossil of deep-buried days.]
  
[And 'mid the budding branches' sway]
  
[In galliard gardens of strange aventine]
  
[When we are senseless grown, to make stones speak.]
  
[Or, stamped with the snake's coil, it be]
  
[Could Keats but have a day or two on earth]
  
DÎS MANIBUS
  
[“Ah lads, I knew your father.” What wide world]
  
[This little day—a bird that flew to me—]
  
[No ship came near: aloof with heed]
  
[And plaintive days that haunt the haggard hills]
  
[Inexplicable blight]
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FOREIGN
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JUVENILIA AND GROTESQUES
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TRANSLATIONS
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TRANSLATIONS from the GERMAN, ITALIAN, FRENCH, AND GREEK

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IV
Sonnet

A Rapture concerning his Lady

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon,
Who makes the air all tremulous with light,
And at whose side is Love himself? that none
Dare speak, but each man's sighs are infinite.
Ah me! how she looks round from left to right,
Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon.
Lady she seems of such high benison
As makes all others graceless in men's sight.
The honour which is hers cannot be said;
To whom are subject all things virtuous,
While all things beauteous own her deity.
Ne'er was the mind of man so nobly led,
Nor yet was such redemption granted us
That we should ever know her perfectly.
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