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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: To Philip Bourke Marston (fair copy, Library of Congress): Rossetti Archive Document
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1878 October
Type of Manuscript: fair copy
Scribe: DGR

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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more about To Philip Bourke Marston, Inciting Me to Poetic Work
To Philip Bourke Marston

(in answer.)
  • Sweet Poet, thou of whom these years that roll
  • Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn,
  • And by the darkness of thine eyes discern
  • How piercing was the sight within thy Soul;—
  • Gifted apart, thou goest to the great goal,
  • A cloud-bound radiant spirit, strong to earn,
  • Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn
  • Vainly light-blest,— the Seër's aureole.
  • And doth thine ear, divinely dower'd to catch
  • 10 All spheral sounds in thy Song blent so well,
  • Still hearken for my voice's slumbering spell
  • With wistful love? Ah! let the Muse now snatch
  • My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch
  • Thy veiled transfiguring sense's miracle.
D.G. Rossetti. Oct. 1878
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 3-1878.lc.rad.xml