Sun-steeped in fire, the homeward pinions sway
   Above the dovecotes-tops;
And clouds of starlings, ere they rest with day,
Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play,
   By turns in every copse:

Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives, -
   Save for the whirr within,
You could not tell the starlings from the leaves;
Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves
   Away with all its din.

                                        from 'Sunset Wings'

For critics like John Ruskin and Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1892) was one of the great creative figures of the day, a painter and a poet of major stature. Yeats and the young Pound regarded him as an exemplary figure of solitary dedication to art and beauty.

Rossetti's most original work may have been in preparing the way for the modernists who in turn dethroned him. He called the sonnet 'a moment's monument', and his best short lyrics are instants of compressed emotion cut free of time. In this, as in the suggestiveness of his imagery, he anticipates the French Symbolists. He can also be regarded as the founder of modern verse translation, not only for the freshness of his versions but also for his choice of poets - Villon, Cavalcanti and the young Dante.

In this selection Clive Wilmer has made a personal choice, emphasizing the 'pure poetry' of the lyrics at the expense of the more conventionally Victorian monologues and narratives. He has also included a generous selection from the translations, and provided a biographical and critical introduction.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Note on the text

Suggestions for further reading



From The House of Life

The Blessed Damozel

My Sister's Sleep

Ave

The Portrait

The Card-Dealer

Jenny

A Trip to Paris and Belgium

Near Brussels-a Half-way Pause

Antwerp and Bruges

Sonnets on Pictures:

For Our Lady of the Rocks (Leonardo)

For A Venetian Pastoral (Giorgione)

For An Allegorical Dance of Women (Mantegna)

For Ruggiero and Angelica (Ingres)

For A Virgin and Child (Memmelinck)

Sister Helen

Dawn on the Night-Journey

A young Fir-wood

The Mirror

During Music

The Honeysuckle

Sudden Light

The Woodspurge

Even So

A Little While

Sunset Wings

Three Shadows

Verses for Rossetti's own works of art:

Aspecta Medusa

Astarte Syriaca

Spheral Change

'I saw the Sibyl at Cumae'

The Orchard-Pit


Translations

From Dante and His Circle:

St Francis of Assisi

Frederick II

Guido Guinicelli

Giacomino Pugliesi

Ubaldo di Marco

Folgore da San Geminiano

Pier Moronelli

Niccolò degli Albizzi

Dante Alighieri

Guido Cavalcanti

Cino da Pistoia

Poems from the French:

Anon: 'John of Tours'

Francois Villon

Index of Titles and First Lines