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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: William Blake
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880
Type of Manuscript: fair copy

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

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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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Sonnet

on

William Blake

by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

First published in ”Ballads and Sonnets“

1881





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more about William Blake
Note: This is a printed copy of the poem taken from the Ballads and Sonnets text (page 314), which has been omitted from this transcription.
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more about William Blake
II. William Blake.

(To Frederick Shields, on his sketch of Blake's work-room

and death room, 3 Fountain Court, Strand.)
  • This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
  • The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
  • As on that very bed, his life partook
  • New birth, and passed. Yon river's distant dusky shoal,
  • Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll,
  • Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare,
  • Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,
  • But to the unfettered irreversible goal.
  • This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
  • 10 Of his soul writ and limned; this other one,
  • His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode
  • Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,
  • Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
  • The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.
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Note: [letter from DGR to TWD]
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Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 6-1880.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library