Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree; Planted by Wm Shakspeare; felled by the Rev.
F. Gastrell
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1869
The
full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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!
page: [ii]
On the Site
of
Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree
by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I
The Original Holograph Manuscript
Written in 1853
II
The Privately-Printed Leaflet
Issued in 1869
page: [1]
- This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
- Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
- Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
- Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
- Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
- Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
- Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
- This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!
- We'll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
-
10 And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
- For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
- Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
- Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
- Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost.
Stratford-on-Avon.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: By permission of the British Library