Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Letter to William Holman Hunt, January 30, 1855
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1855 January 23
Type of Manuscript: letter
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
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Transcription Gap: pages 1-2 and most of 3 of letter (to be added later)
The clocks are striking two. I seem to have chatted with you this past hour as of old. There
seems no further news, but it is a shame to send blank paper as far as Jerusalem, so I'll
finish with something of the class that usualy goes to Jericho: my last sonnet—not the best I
think of severaI I have done lately, my only poetic productions, save one ballad, for the last
two years or so: not the best, but the only one in my pocket book. Here it is, and may God
bless you, dear Hunt, and believe me
Yours affectionately,
D. G. Rossetti
- The gloom which breathes upon me with these airs
- Is like the drops that strike the traveller's brow
- Who knows not, darkling hastening, if they menace now
- Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
- Ah! bodes this hour its harvest of new tares?
- Or tells again but of the day whose plough
- Sowed hunger since;—The night at last when thou,
- O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
- How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
- 10 Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
- Lie here and there Lie by Time's grace, till night & sleep may soothe.
- Even as the thistle-down from pathsides dead
- Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
- Which, one new year, makes soft her marriage-bed.
The last simile is from what you told me as a fact common in parts of England.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
dgr.ltr.0540.rad.xml
Copyright: From the collection of Mrs. Michael Joseph.