by Dinah Roe
19. cerements cloths for wrapping a corpse.
23–7. What song … strange image heard? see ll. 8–10 of Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’:
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
53. Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd refers to an episode in Jonah when God displays his power by making a giant gourd grow in order to shelter Jonah, then infesting it with a worm so that it withers and dies. See Jonah 4; see also Jonah 3, where God, having vowed to destroy Nineveh, spares the city.
60. Sardanapalus the last King of Assyria.
62. Sennacherib Assyrian king who rebuilt Nineveh and made it his capital. Assassinated by his sons. He is described in Lord Byron’s ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ (1815).
64. Semiramis the mythological daughter of an Assyrian king and a goddess. Wife of Nineveh’s founder.
70. DGR’s footnote refers to the works on Nineveh of contemporary explorer, excavator and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard (1817–94): Nineveh and Its Remains (1840) and A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh (1852).
109. Isis principal goddess of ancient Egypt, goddess of fertility – the cow (see l. 108) was sacred to her; Ibis a long-legged wading bird, sacred to Isis.
110. Thebes Greek name for the ancient Egyptian capital under the eighteenth dynasty. The site of the major temples of Luxor and Karnak, it is famous for its monuments and Egyptian treasures.
113. teraphim small objects used in ancient times as household gods or oracles.
125. sardonyx type of onyx (a semi-precious stone) containing bands of sard, a reddish mineral; porphyry semi-precious, reddish-purple stone with large crystals.
148. taboring drumming.
164. gypsum soft mineral found in sedimentary deposits from which plaster of Paris is made.
166. erst long ago, formerly.
171–5. For as that Bull-god … with destiny see ll. 2–4 and 12–14 of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’: ‘ … Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies …’; ‘…Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
181–90. Or it may chance … God of Nineveh see ll. 46–8 of Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’: ‘When old age shall this generation waste, / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe, / Than ours …’
182. hoary having white or grey hair, aged.
Jenny
Composed 1847–8. Poems (1870). Singled out for criticism by Robert Buchanan in FS, in which he accuses DGR of plagiarizing it from his own poem ‘Artist and Model’. WBS claimed his ‘Rosabell’, which DGR knew well, was also an inspiration.
Epigraph. William Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor IV.i.63–4.
21. lodestar a star used to guide ships, in particular the pole star.
24. serried arranged in rows.
48–9. Your silk ungirdled … to the waist see l. 7 of ‘The Blessed Damozel’: ‘Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem’.
100–101. Behold the lilies … do they spin ‘And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’ (Matthew 6:28–9). See also Luke 12:27. Christ’s parable of the lilies is a recurring theme of DGR’s poetry. Lilies also symbolize innocence.
116. roses emblems of love and beauty.
133. broil commotion, quarrel; bale torment, sorrow.
166. Lethe a river in Hades whose waters cause the dead to forget their lives on earth.
230. aureole circle of light, like a halo.
233. descried seen, espied.
237. Raffael Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), Italian Renaissance artist; Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Italian Renaissance artist.
270. sanguine ruddy.
278. cipher a secret manner of writing, a code; also a person of no importance or worth, a nonentity. The poem makes use of both these meanings.
280–81. A riddle … scornful sphinx to enter the city of Thebes, according to Greek mythology, travellers had to answer a riddle posed by the Sphinx (a monster with a woman’s head and lion’s body) guarding the entrance. Incorrect guesses resulted in death.
282. Like a toad within a stone DGR inverts the image of the toadstone, a stone believed to form within the body of a toad and to have magical or healing properties. See also William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, II.i.12–17:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
315–16. Your lamp, my Jenny … Like a wise virgin’s refers to the biblical parable of the wise and foolish virgins. While awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom, the wise virgins bring extra oil for their lamps, while the foolish virgins run out of oil. The foolish virgins go out to seek more oil, but return to find the bridegroom has arrived and shut the door against them. See Matthew 25:1–13.
322. pier-glass long mirror placed on a wall between two windows and frequently of the same shape.
345. purse slang for ‘vagina’, and ‘scrotum’.
366. Paphian relating to Paphos, a city of Cyprus where Venus was worshipped – ‘Cyprian’ (inhabitant of Cyprus) is slang for ‘prostitute’; Venus Roman goddess of beauty and sensual love.
370. Priapus mythological Greek god of fertility.
380. Danaë in Greek mythology, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. She is imprisoned to prevent her from conceiving the son who it is prophesied will murder the king. Zeus appears to her, disguised in the form of a shower of gold, and her son Perseus is conceived. Years later, Perseus kills Acrisius accidentally with a discus during games.
The Portrait
Composed 1847. Poems (1870).
1–9. This is her picture … earth is over her see the opening lines of Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842): ‘That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, / Looking as if she were alive …’ See also ‘The Portrait’ and ‘Willowwood’ (Sonnets X and XLIX, L, LI, LII of The House of Life) and CGR’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’.
3. glass mirror, looking-glass.
11. rude rough, basic.
41–5. And with her … another echo there see ‘Willowwood’, Sonnet IV, ll. 9–11: ‘ … I leaned low and drank / A long draught from the water where she sank, / Her breath and all her tears and all her soul’.
97. music of the suns see note for l. 54 of ‘The Blessed Damozel’.
Nuptial Sleep
Composed 1869. Poems (1870), from which the text is taken and where it is Sonnet V in The House of Life sequence; DGR removed it from Poems: A New Edition (1881). It was singled out for attack by Robert Buchanan’s 1871 review (FS, 338):
Here is a full-grown man, presumably intelligent and cultivated, putting on record, for other full-grown men to read, the most secret mysteries of sexual connection, and that with so sickening a desire to reproduce the sensual mood, so careful a choice of epithet to convey mere animal sensations, that we merely shudder at the shameless nakedness … It is simply nasty.
The Woodspurge
Composed 1856. Poems (1870). See Thomas Woolner’s ‘Emblems’.
The Honeysuckle
Composed 1853. Poems (1870). See ACS’s ‘Before Parting’.
Title. Wild honeysuckle is an emblem of inconstancy in love.
4. quag-water marshy or boggy water.
12. virgin lamps see note for ll. 315–16 of ‘Jenny’.
The Sea-Limits
Composed 1849. An early version of this poem appears in the Germ (March 1850) as a two-stanza po
em, ‘From the Cliffs: Noon’. First poetry volume Poems (1870).
15–20. Listen alone … surge again see ll. 9–14 of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ (1867).
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
For ‘The Wine of Circe’ by Edward Burne-Jones
Composed 1870. Poems (1870).
Title. Refers to an episode in The Odyssey where Odysseus’ men turn into pigs after drinking the witch Circe’s wine. The EBJ painting (1863–9) is now in a private collection.
5. Helios in Greek mythology, the sun god; Hecatè in Greek mythology, goddess of dark places; associated with sorcery.
6. votaress a devoted follower or advocate.
8. countersign password given in reply to a soldier on guard.
Mary’s Girlhood
Composed 1848–9. Poems (1870). The sonnet’s close attention to detail, explicit iconography and heavy symbolism are typical of the early Pre-Raphaelite period. This sonnet has a second part which WMR included in his brother’s posthumous Works (1911).
Title. Refers to DGR’s first completed oil painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, a significant early work (1849), now in Tate Britain. The sonnet was inscribed on the picture frame. CGR posed for Mary.
7. Faithful … in charity ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity’ (1 Corinthians 13:13).
10. lily emblem of innocence; associated with the Virgin Mary.
12. She woke in her white bed WMR notes that this line has ‘a more direct connection’ with DGR’s second painting – The Annunciation (or Ecce Ancilla Domini!) (1849–50), now in Tate Britain – which depicts Mary in white on a white bed.
14. fulness of the time ‘But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law’ (Galatians 4:4).
On the ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante
Composed 1852. Poems (1870).
Title. Vita Nuova, or ‘New Life’ (Italian), the autobiography of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), which details his love for his muse, Beatrice Portinari (1266–90). DGR wrote this sonnet for his own translation of the Vita Nuova.
5. threefold refers to the terza rima form of Dante’s most famous work, The Divine Comedy.
Beauty and the Bird
Composed c.1854. Poems (1870). May have been inspired by WHD’s The Pet (or Lady Feeding a Bird) (1850–52), now in Tate Britain.
9–11. the child in Chaucer ... name in song ‘The Prioress’s Tale’ from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. In the story, Satan incites Jews to murder a boy who sings a hymn about the Virgin Mary. After his death, the boy goes on singing until an abbot removes a grain that Mary has placed on the boy’s tongue.
A Match with the Moon
Composed 1854. Poems (1870).
4–5. doubled on my sight / in ponds was reflected.
8. welkin’s sky’s.
John Keats
Composed 1880. Ballads and Sonnets (1881), from which the text is taken. Sonnet IV of the sequence ‘Five English Poets’. Other poets are Thomas Chatterton, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Title. John Keats (1795–1821), poet whose early death from tuberculosis was popularly attributed to his poems’ harsh treatment at the hands of reviewers. Prompted by the publication of Monkton Milnes’s Life and Letters of John Keats (1848) and Alfred Tennyson’s appreciation of Keats’s work, the Pre-Raphaelites did much to revive his reputation in the nineteenth century, portraying Keatsian figures and themes in both painting and poetry. DGR identified powerfully with Keats, and a similar mythology grew around DGR’s early death. Buchanan’s ‘Fleshly School’ review (see the Introduction) has been credited with beginning Rossetti’s demise. See also Shelley’s poem on Keats’s death, ‘Adonias’ (1821) and CGR’s sonnet ‘On Keats’. WMR notes that ‘in his last few years, the poetry of Keats was more constantly present to my brother’s thoughts than that of any one else’ (DGR, Works, 671).
4. Castalian Castalia was a spring on Mount Parnassus sacred to Apollo and the Muses; Latmos mountain where the Greek goddess Selene falls in love with Endymion and swears to protect him for ever, a reference to Keats’s ‘Endymion’ (1818).
6. Lethe see note for l. 166 of ‘Jenny’. See also l. 1 of Keats’s ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820): ‘No, no! go not to Lethe …’
7. labour spurned refers to poor notices from reviewers.
8. Rome’s sheltering shadow Keats died and was buried in Rome.
12–13. not writ / But rumour’d in water refers to Keats’s epitaph, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’.
Words on the Window-Pane
Composed 1853. Ballads and Sonnets (1881), from which the text is taken.
4. tettered afflicted with a ‘tetter’, a skin irritation characterized by itchy patches; cark troubled state of mind, distress, anxiety.
9. Howbeit nevertheless, however.
Astarte Syriaca
Composed 1877. Ballads and Sonnets (1881), from which the text is taken.
Title. Phoenician goddess of love and fertility, identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Roman goddess Venus (see ll. 2–3). The title and subtitle ‘(For a Picture)’ refer to a DGR painting of 1877, now in Manchester Art Gallery.
8. spheres’ dominant tune see note for l. 54 of ‘The Blessed Damozel’.
FROM THE HOUSE OF LIFE
For editions of The House of Life sequence, see the introduction to this section on DGR’s poems. The sonnets from ‘V. Heart’s Hope’ up to and including ‘LIII. Without Her’ are from ‘Part I: Youth and Change’, while the remaining sonnets are from ‘Part II: Change and Fate’.
A Sonnet is a moment’s monument
Composed 1880.
4. lustral relating to ceremonial purification.
8. orient lustrous, specifically in reference to a fine-quality pearl.
12. dower a dowry, a bride’s assets offered to her husband’s estate upon marriage.
14. In Charon’s palm … to Death in Greek mythology, Charon is an old man who ferries the dead across the River Styx to Hades, the underworld. His passengers pay him to take them across.
V
Heart’s Hope
Composed 1871.
4. Even as that sea … dryshod biblical episode in Exodus 14 in which Moses parts the waters of the Red Sea to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
7–8. Thy soul I know not … from myself the separation and union of body and soul is a recurring theme of this sonnet sequence.
VI
The Kiss
Composed 1869. Poems (1870).
7. Orpheus in Greek mythology, a musician poet who fails to secure his wife Eurydice’s release from the dead when he disobeys the command to resist looking back at her during their journey out of the underworld.
8. lay medieval narrative poem, often sung.
X
The Portrait
Composed 1869. Poems (1870). See CGR’s sonnet ‘In an Artist’s Studio’ for a very different treatment of the same subject. See also Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842).
7. refluent ebbing.
XI
The Love-Letter
Composed 1870. Poems (1870).
XVIII
Genius in Beauty
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881).
2. Homer (eighth century BC) Greek epic poet and author of The Odyssey and The Iliad; Dante Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet and author of The Divine Comedy and the Vita Nuova; see also the title note for ‘On the “Vita Nuova” of Dante’.
3. Michael the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo (1475–1564).
13. void of ruth with no
pity.
XIX
Silent Noon
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881).
12. dower a dowry, a bride’s assets offered to her husband’s estate upon marriage.
XXV
Winged Hours
Composed 1869. Poems (1870).
3. covert thicket, also feathers covering the bases of a bird’s wing and tail feathers.
11. unleaved with leaves removed.
12. brake thicket.
XXVII
Heart’s Compass
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881).
4. halcyon a time gone by that was peaceful and happy.
7. oracular of or relating to an oracle, a figure who acts as a medium for the advice and prophecy of the gods.
13. gage object, often a glove, thrown down by way of issuing a challenge for a duel or combat.
XXIX
The Moonstar
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881). See sonnet 218 of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (‘Tra quantunque leggiadre donne et belle’ (‘However many lovely, charming ladies’)), whose language and themes Rossetti’s English sonnet echoes.
8. votaress a devoted follower or acolyte.
11. emulous seeking to match, surpass or imitate.
XL
Severed Selves
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881).
XLIX, L, LI, LII
Willowwood
Composed 1868. Fortnightly Review (March 1869). First poetry volume Poems (1870). ‘Willowwood’ comprises four sonnets, numbers XLIX, L, LI and LII in the sequence.
I
11. drouth drought.
IV
2. wellaway lamentation.
14. aureole circle of light, like a halo.
LIII
Without Her
Composed 1871. Ballads and Sonnets (1881).
1. glass mirror, looking glass.
LXIII
Inclusiveness
Fortnightly Review (March 1869). Poems (1870). WMR comments: ‘I question whether the word “Inclusiveness” quite indicates to the reader what the author meant to convey in this sonnet. The uncouth word, “many-sidedness,” or “divergent identity,” might be more apt’ (DGR, Works, 655).
4. board a table.
LXIX
Autumn Idleness
Composed November 1850. Poems (1870). See John Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ (1820).