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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Threefold Homage
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1868
Type of Manuscript: fair copy

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

Image of page endpaper page: endpaper
Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS

JAMES WISE

HIS BOOK

  • BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
  • WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
  • SOLACE OF SOLITUDE&
  • BONDS OF SOCIETY!
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more about Threefold Homage
Threefold Homage
  • Was I most born to paint your sovereign face,
  • Or most to sing it, or most to love it, dear?
  • Full sweet the hope that unborn eye and ear
  • Through me may guess the secret of your grace.
  • Yet ah! 'neath every picture might I trace
  • And note beside each song,— “Let none think here
  • To breathe indeed this beauty's atmosphere,
  • To apprehend this body and soul's embrace!”
  • Faint shadow of you at best I weave; except
  • 10That innermost image all unseen, which still
  • Proves me at heart your beauty's crowned adept
  • Yet was this nought, our hope's high day to fill,—
  • That o'er us, while we kissed, with answering thrill,
  • Two Muses held Love's hands, and smiled, and wept?
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Note: blank page
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 6-1868.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library