Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Heart's Hope (corrected holograph copy, Bancroft Collection)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1871
Type of Manuscript: holograph pen and ink fair copy
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
![Image of page [1]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/2-1871.delms.jpg)
Printer's Direction: to come first in the series
Editorial Description: DGR's note on the placement of the sonnet
Manuscript Addition: V / Youth and Change
Editorial Description: Notation by unknown hand identifying the sonnet
Note: The alternative readings for lines 12-13 are written by DGR at the foot of the
page.
- By what word's power, the key to paths untrod,
- Shall I the difficult deeps of thought pass o'er Love explore,
- And Till parted waves of song yield up the shore
- Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
- For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
- Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
- Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
- Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
- Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
- 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
- As to all hearts all things shall signify;
- Tender as dawn's first foot-fire first hill-fire, and intense
- Like fires by dawn restored, we know not whence,
- As instantaneous penetrating sense,
- Or etc etc ——
- In Spring's first hour birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
2-1871.delms.rad.xml
Copyright: Digital images courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R.
Bancroft Collection.