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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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SEPTEMBER

And in September, O what keen delight!
Falcons and astors, merlins, sparrowhawks;
Decoy-birds that shall lure your game in flocks;
And hounds with bells: and gauntlets stout and tight;
Wide pouches; crossbows shooting out of sight;
Arblasts and javelins; balls and ball-cases;
All birds the best to fly at; moulting these,
Those reared by hand; with finches mean and slight;
And for their chase, all birds the best to fly;
And each to each of you be lavish still
In gifts; and robbery find no gainsaying;
And if you meet with travellers going by,
Their purses from your purse's flow shall fill;
And avarice be the only outcast thing.
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