by Dinah Roe
Title. Laus Veneris in praise of Venus (or love) (Latin). Also the title of an EBJ painting (1873–5), now in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.
1. Asleep or waking is it see l. 80 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?’
16. feet and hands … were priced refers to Christ’s crucifixion to save mankind.
25. Horsel Hörselberg in Thuringia, the location of the underground palace of Venus.
26. wot knows.
133. Adonis the mortal object of Venus’s love. Though she warns him to be careful when hunting, Adonis is killed by a wild boar. Venus transforms his blood into anemones, delicate, short-lived flowers.
172. Nathless nevertheless.
197–9. Egyptian lote-leaf is … suckling snake of gold a reference to Cleopatra (69–30 BC), ancient Egyptian queen known for her seductive charm and political acumen. Legend has it that she committed suicide by holding an asp to her breast.
200. Semiramis the mythological daughter of an Assyrian king and a goddess, wife of Nineveh’s founder, known for her great beauty and sexual appetite.
252. teen suffering, grief.
271. springe a snare.
272. gin a trap or snare.
278. vair fur used for trimming garments.
283. Magdalen see note for l. 25 of WBS’s ‘Rosabell’.
296. guerdon reward, recompense.
299. bay-leaf worn to signify poetic talent.
350. Who in the Lord God’s likeness bears the keys the keys to the kingdom of heaven entrusted by Jesus to Simon Peter, and part of the papal insignia ever since.
365. wist learned, came to know.
390–91. As when she came … whereon she trod evoking the birth of Venus, who, according to classical mythology, rose fully formed from the sea.
398. swart black.
417. till the thunder in the trumpet be see 1 Corinthians 15:52: ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’
424. The thunder of the trumpets of the night see the note to l. 417.
A Match
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866).
25. thrall slave.
26. page servant, attendant.
A Cameo
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866). See CGR’s ‘The World’.
8. pashed smashed, crushed.
14. Peradventure maybe, by chance, perhaps.
The Leper
Composed 1857–8. Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866). The original poem contains a French postscript supposedly from Grandes Chroniques de France, 1515, which, like the epigraph of ‘Laus Veneris’, is Swinburne’s creation. Compare with ‘Laus Veneris’, DGR’s ‘Jenny’ and WM’s ‘The Gilliflower of Gold’. See also Robert Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (1836).
19. wattled constructed by interweaving stakes with twigs or branches.
30. privy hidden, secret.
140. The old question. Will not God do right? see l. 60 of Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’: ‘And yet God has not said a word!’
A Ballad of Burdens
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866).
Title. See title note for DGR’s ‘The Burden of Nineveh’. Like that poem, ‘A Ballad of Burdens’ makes use of all meanings of ‘burden’.
61. garner granary.
L’Envoy. The short, final stanza at the end of a poem, commonly used in French poetic forms such as the ballade or chant royal; from the Middle French envoy (the act of sending or dispatching).
The Garden of Proserpine
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866).
Title. Proserpine Roman name for the Greek goddess Persephone, who is abducted by Pluto and made queen of the underworld. Her mother Demeter (or Roman ‘Ceres’, see note for l. 59) refuses to let spring come to the earth until her daughter returns. Persephone is allowed to return, but because she has eaten some pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she is obliged to remain there for part of each year. See also CGR’s ‘Dream Land’.
23. wot know.
27. poppies emblems of sleep.
28. Green grapes of Proserpine see l. 4 of John Keats’s ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820): ‘ruby grape of Proserpine’.
59. the earth her mother Proserpine’s mother is Ceres, goddess of plants and the harvest.
93. vernal of or relating to spring.
Before Parting
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866). See DGR’s ‘The Honeysuckle’ and Sonnet XXIX, ll. 13–16, of George Meredith’s Modern Love.
4–5. And that strong … has burst see ll. 27–8 of John Keats’s ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820): ‘Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue / Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine’.
11. wise way.
31–2. leaves your hair … hid spice see ll. 396–7 of ‘Laus Veneris’: ‘Her hair had smells of all the sunburnt south, / Strange spice and flower …’ See also ll. 14–15 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! / O for a beaker full of the warm South!’
Love and Sleep
Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866). See DGR’s ‘Nuptial Sleep’.
8. wist know.
12. hair smelling of the south see note for ll. 31–2 of ‘Before Parting’.
The King’s Daughter
Composed 1860. Poems and Ballads (Moxon, 1866). This poem’s subject matter is obscure. Clyde K. Hyder suggests that its events are taken from a popular ballad, ‘The King’s Dochter Lady Jean’, where a woman is raped by a stranger who turns out to be her brother. Brother and sister both die in the end. Hyder speculates that the king’s son in ACS’s poem has chosen the one maiden out of the ten who is his sister. See Clyde K. Hyder, ‘Swinburne and the Popular Ballad’, PMLA 49.1 (March 1934), pp. 295–309.
11. may maiden.
37. goodliest the best quality.
55. streek prepare a corpse for burial.
A Ballad of Dreamland
Belgravia (September 1876). First poetry volume Poems and Ballads II (Chatto & Windus, 1878). See CGR’s ‘Dream Land’.
8. Only the song of a secret bird see ll. 1–2 of CGR’s ‘A Birthday’: ‘My heart is like a singing bird / Whose nest is in a watered shoot’.
14. hope deferred a biblical allusion much favoured by CGR. See l. 2 of ‘A Pause of Thought’: ‘And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth’.
15. dispart to separate, divide.
Envoi. See note for ‘L’Envoy’ in ‘A Ballad of Burdens’.
Sonnet for a Picture
The Heptalogia (Chatto & Windus, 1880), a volume of parodies of contemporary poets. This one parodies DGR’s poetic style as well as poking fun at his painting.
5. rutilant glowing with red or golden light.
7. shewbread loaves of bread as offerings to God.
From Tristram of Lyonesse
Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1882). This extract reproduces ll. 1–75 of ‘I. The Sailing of the Swallow’.
Title. From an Arthurian legend in which Tristram travels to Ireland to win Yseult (also spelled ‘Iseult’) of Ireland’s hand in marriage for King Mark of Cornwall. During the return voyage to Cornwall, Tristram and Yseult begin a tragic affair after drinking a love potion intended for Yseult and King Mark. Yseult marries King Mark while Tristram marries Yseult of Brittany, known also as Yseult aux Blanches Mains (‘of the White Hands’). After Tristram is mortally wounded, Yseult of Ireland voyages to heal him, but arrives too late and dies of grief. This is an outline of the story’s basic events; there are many different versions and variations. Lyonesse legendary home of Tristram, said to border Cornwall.
8. high Carlion Caerleon-upon-Usk, Wales, the site of one of King Arthur’s main residences; sometimes identified with Camelot.
10. Tintagel Mark of Cornwall’s castle. Also where King Arthur is conceived.
11. stem bow of a ship.
36. plenilune full moon.
57–63. The whole fair body … star and plume Compare with DGR’s description of ‘The Blessed Damozel’ in the first two stanzas of that poem.
A Death on Easter Day
Composed 1882. Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1882).
Title. This sonnet is about DGR, who died on Easter Sunday, 1882. See WMR’s ‘Dedication’.
A Ballad of Appeal
A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1884).
Subtitle. To Christina G. Rossetti see Biographical Notes for CGR. ACS dedicated A Century of Roundels (1883) to her.
1–2. Song wakes … only feel see l. 1 of CGR’s ‘A Birthday’: ‘My heart is like a singing bird’.
15. keen wail; also ‘sharp’.
19. clave split.
27. lave wash (from the French laver).
JOHN PAYNE
All poems were first published in (and are taken from) New Poems (Newman and Co., 1880), unless otherwise noted.
This is the House of Dreams. Whoso is fain
The Masque of Shadows (W. H. Allen, 1870).
From Sir Floris
The Masque of Shadows (W. H. Allen, 1870). This extract from Sir Floris reproduces ll. 1–77 of ‘I. The First Coming of the Dove’.
Subtitle. Coming of the Dove later in this poem, a dove appears to Sir Floris, leading him on a quest.
5. castellain governor or constable of a castle.
22. morion crested metal helmet.
26. clarion trumpet.
49. disport amusement.
53. demesne domain.
57. idlesse idleness.
A Birthday Song
See CGR’s ‘A Birthday’.
1. roses emblems of love and beauty.
Dream-Life
10. cloud-wrack a group of drifting clouds.
Love’s Amulet
Title. Amulet charm worn to protect the wearer from harm.
10. Roses emblems of love and beauty.
11. Lilies emblems of innocence.
28. thorow through.
Rondeau
Title. Rondeau short lyrical poem based on two rhymes, with the opening words used as an unrhymed refrain.
12. roses emblems of love and beauty.
Sad Summer
9. guerdon reward; lay medieval narrative poem.
ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY
Ode
Music and Moonlight (Chatto & Windus, 1874).
19. Nineveh see title note for DGR’s ‘The Burden of Nineveh’.
20. Babel in Genesis 11, God punishes the hubristic builders of the Tower of Babel by confounding their language, so that they can no longer understand one another.
Song [‘I made another garden, yea’]
Music and Moonlight (Chatto & Windus, 1874).
Song [‘I went to her who loveth me no more’]
Music and Moonlight (Chatto & Windus, 1874). See ACS’s ‘A Match’ and ‘The Leper’. See also Robert Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (1836).
The Great Encounter
Music and Moonlight (Chatto & Windus, 1874).
5–11. My old aspiring self … curse and fell see ll. 10–14 of DGR’s ‘Lost Days’:
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
‘I am thyself, – what hast thou done to me?’
And I – and I – thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’
Living Marble
Songs of a Worker (Chatto & Windus, 1881).
5. unchid unscolded, unchided.
7–8. vain-hearted queen … wayward Venus Venus is the Roman goddess of beauty and sensual love; see also ACS’s ‘Laus Veneris’.
The Line of Beauty
Songs of a Worker (Chatto & Windus, 1881). See John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820).
11. consummate perfect, complete.
14. God become human and man grown divine see ll. 386–7 of Swinburne’s ‘Laus Veneris: ‘And lo my love, mine own soul’s heart, more dear / Than mine own soul, more beautiful than God’.
Pentelicos
Songs of a Worker (Chatto & Windus, 1881).
Title. Greek mountain, known for its fine marble.
Paros
Songs of a Worker (Chatto & Windus, 1881). See DGR’s ‘The Portrait’ (1870), Elizabeth Siddal’s ‘The Lust of the Eyes’ and CGR’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’.
Title. Greek island, known for its white marble.
3. consummate perfect, complete.
12–14. Not simply woman … eternal being see ll. 12–14 of DGR’s ‘The Portrait’ (Sonnet X of The House of Life): ‘Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note / That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!) / They that would look on her must come to me.’
Carrara
Songs of a Worker (Chatto & Windus, 1881). See Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ (1817). See also John Ruskin’s ‘The Hills of Carrara’ and DGR’s ‘The Burden of Nineveh’.
Title. See title note for Ruskin’s ‘The Hills of Carrara’.
4. scathe harm, injury.
6. laths straps of wood forming a foundation for the laying of a roof, wall or fence.
13. shriven absolved.
26. chidden scolded, chided, rebuked.
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON
All poems were first published in (and are taken from) Song-Tide and Other Poems (Ellis and Green, 1871), unless otherwise noted.
Love’s Shrines
See DGR’s ‘Without Her’.
Love Past Utterance
See DGR’s ‘The Portrait’ (Sonnet X of The House of Life), Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s ‘Paros’ and CGR’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’.
Love’s Warfare
See Sonnet VI of George Meredith’s Modern Love.
Stronger Than Sleep
See DGR’s ‘Nuptial Sleep’.
5. roses emblems of love and beauty.
The New Religion
All in All: Poems and Sonnets (Chatto & Windus, 1875). See DGR’s ‘A Sonnet is a moment’s monument’.
I. lays medieval narrative poems, meant to be sung.
II. He that hath ears to hearken, let him hear a common biblical injunction which refers to mankind’s ability to perceive God. For example, Deuteronomy 29:4: ‘Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.’
OLIVER MADOX BROWN
Both poems first published in The Dwale Bluth, Hebditch’s Legacy, and Other Literary Remains, vol. 2 (Tinsley Brothers, 1876).
Sonnet: Written at the Age of Thirteen for a Picture by Mrs Stillman
Title note. Mrs Stillman Mrs William James Stillman, née Marie Spartali. A painter in the Pre-Raphaelite style and model for Pre-Raphaelite painters, she modelled for Oliver Madox Brown’s father, FMB, with whom she also studied painting.
Index of Titles
Page numbers in italics refer to the Notes. Where there are two italicized numbers, the first refers to the introductory note to a group of poems. Where an individual poem is not annotated, the italicized number refers to the introductory note. For an explanation of how the source details for the poems are shown in the Notes, please see p. 322.
After Death 171, 354
Angel in the House: The Betrothal, The [an extract] 26, 326
Angela Damnifera 20, 325, 326
Apology, An [from The Earthly Paradise] 236, 363
Art for Art’s Sake 9, 324
As a critic, the Poet Buchanan 133, 332, 347–8
Astarte Syriaca 115, 332, 341
At Last 140, 348, 349
Autumn Idleness [Sonnet LXIX of The House of Life] 125, 332, 344
Babylon the Great 181, 356
Ballad of Appeal, A 278, 363, 368
Ballad of Burdens, A 265, 363, 366
Ballad of Dreamland, A 274, 363, 3
67
Ballad of Life, A 240, 363, 364
Barren Spring [Sonnet LXXXIII of The House of Life] 126, 332, 345
Beauty and the Bird 113, 332, 339
Before Parting 270, 363, 366
Birthday, A 171, 353
Birthday Song, A 284, 369
Blessed Damozel, The 82, 332, 333
Blue Closet, The 212, 359, 361
Body’s Beauty [Sonnet LXXVIII of The House of Life] 125, 332, 344
Burden of Nineveh, The 88, 332, 334
Cameo, A 259, 363, 365
Card-Dealer, The 86, 332, 333
Carrara 296, 371
Chapel in Lyoness, The 188, 359
Child Jesus, The [an extract] 40, 328
Christ Church, Oxford 12, 324, 325
Dead Love 136, 348
Death on Easter Day, A 278, 363, 368
Dedication 149, 351
Defence of Guenevere, The 193, 359
Dream Land 152, 351
Dream-Life 285, 369
Early Death 141, 348, 349
Earthly Paradise, The [an extract] 236, 363
Emblems 57, 329
End, An 153, 351
Evil Under the Sun, The 149, 350
Express 35, 327
Faded Love 287, 369
Fairies, The 30, 327
For ‘The Wine of Circe’ by Edward Burne-Jones 111, 332, 338
For the Picture Called ‘Work’ 21, 325, 326
For the Picture ‘The Last of England’ 20, 325, 326
Garden of Proserpine, The 267, 363, 366
Genius in Beauty [Sonnet XVIII of The House of Life] 118, 332, 342
Gilliflower of Gold, The 204, 359, 360
Goblin Market 155, 352
Golden Wings 216, 359, 361
Gone 137, 348
Gracious Chivalry, The [from The Angel in the House: The Betrothal] 26, 326, 327
Great Encounter, The 293, 370
Haystack in the Floods, The 225, 359, 361
He and She and Angels Three 142, 348, 349
Heart’s Compass [Sonnet XXVII of The House of Life] 120, 332, 343
Heart’s Hope [Sonnet V of The House of Life] 116, 332, 341
Her First Season 148, 350
Hills of Carrara, The 15, 324, 325
Historical Painter named Brown, A 131, 332, 347
Honeysuckle, The 110, 332, 338
House of Life, The [an extract] 116, 332, 341
‘I Go to be Cured at Avilion’ 8, 324
In a Letter to William Bell Scott at Penkill 186, 358