New Poems by Christina Rossetti

This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com B'iV IMMM'SSMEGSm %NMOWVENM^IY n .v NEW POEMS BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI ,j&m NEW POEMS BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED OR UNCOLLECTED EDITED BY WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI I rated to the full amount Must render mine account Ncfa gork MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1896 All rights reserved ts Copyright, 1896, By MACMILLAN AND CO- 254874 Norfooott 30ress J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. TO ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE GENEROUS EULOGIST OF CHRISTINA ROSSETTI WHO HAILED HIS GENIUS AND PRIZED HIMSELF THE GREATEST OF LIVING BRITISH POETS MY OLD AND CONSTANT FRIEND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK W. M. R. PREFACE My sister Christina Georgina Rossetti — beloved by me, admired, and I may say reverenced — died on 29 December 1894, aged 64. There was an immediate, a very wide, and an exceedingly strong outburst of eulogy of her in the public press, both as woman and as poetess ; an outburst which must have fully convinced me — had I not known it already — that she is regarded as one of the truly important figures in British poetical literature of the nineteenth century. It will readily be supposed that I do not contest that opinion ; and, as soon as the conditions admitted of it, I resolved to put into print any verses of hers which I could find, such as would sustain her poetical reputation, or be of substantial interest as showing the growth of her mind. I looked carefully through the materials which she had left behind her ; found many things which I remembered, and others of viii PREFACE which I knew little or nothing ; and perceived that the amount of her unpublished verse was considerably in excess of what I had surmised. The result is that I now present to the reader a rather large volume, and not (as I had expected) a small one. A glance at the Contents will at once exhibit the arrangement which has been adopted in this collec tion. There are four headings : — i, General Poems ; 2, Devotional Poems; 3, Italian; and 4, Juvenilia. Nos. 1 and 2 explain themselves well enough. As to No. 3, it may suffice to say that I am well aware these Italian writings will obtain few readers in this country ; but Christina was partly an Italian, and it may be that her compatriots of the South will not be wholly unheedful of what she composed in their tongue. I consider that her Italian verses are, from a poetical point of view, every bit as good as her English verses, while the exquisite limpidity of the Italian language adds something to the flow of their music. There are likely to be some inaccuracies and blemishes of diction, but perhaps only a native eye would detect these — mine barely does. Section 4 is, of course, of less intrinsic worth than the other sec tions, but I am in hopes that it will count as not wholly uninteresting. I class among the Juvenilia all that the authoress wrote before attaining (on 5 December PREFACE ix 1847) the full age of seventeen ; all these things, and nothing else. In this last-named section I make no distinction of subject-matter, nor yet of language. Everything is ranged in order of date, precise or approximate ; the like order (it will be perceived) is observed in the other sections respectively. A few remarks on the sources of the volume may be desirable. As soon as Christina began writing verse, 27 April 1842, her compositions were copied into little note books. These are seventeen in number, going on to 11 June 1866. The date of each piece is accurately recorded. At first the handwriting is that of our elder sister Maria ; it is only on 1 7 November 1847, when she was close on seventeen years of age, that Christina began trusting to her own extremely neat but (for several years) rather timid and formal script. Persons familiar with the dates of her publi cations will observe that the note-books go up to about the time when she printed the volume named The Prince's Progress and other Poems, leaving un touched the date, 1 881, of her later volume, A Pageant and other Poems. These seventeen note-books are I the source of a considerable majority of the items in our present volume ; and they would enable me (as already implied) to fix the dates not only of what I x PREFACE am now printing, but also of the contents of my sister's first two published volumes. No little interest, I think, attaches to dates, and, if I have the opportu nity at some future time, I shall feel it a satisfaction to show what were the dates of her poems previously known to readers. Supplementing the note-books, my sources are — the privately-printed volume of 1847, called Verses; another privately-printed book, Hadrian's Address to his Soul ; The Germ ; the original Goblin Market volume, containing three compositions not afterwards reprinted ; Christina's prose book entitled Common place and other Stories, and (for Italian translations) a copy of her Singsong ; three volumes of selected hymns and devotional verse, named individually in my notes ; Mr. Caine's compilation, Sonnets of Three Centuries; some magazines and reviews, such as Macmillan 's Magazine, The Athenceum, etc. ; and various scattered MSS. which remained in her own possession. My notes give any needful particulars as to this matter, and as to some other points which the reader may prefer to see mentioned. It seems more than probable that other verses by my sister, as yet uncollected, were printed here and there in magazines etc., but I have not as yet succeeded in tracing any such. Possibly also — spite of painstaking PREFACE xi inspection on my part — some passages included in the present volume from MSS. may have appeared else where, printed under altered headings ; I have done my best to avoid any such repetition. I have reprinted everything by my sister which I find already published, not in volume form. I omit the more unsuccessful items in her early book of Verses ; and I omit also a certain — not large — number of compositions in MS., whether in the note books or otherwise, which appear to me to represent her less than well. It is for the reader to form his own opinion whether the contents of the present volume are good, bad, or indifferent. But he may perhaps expect me to give some intimation as to the value which I attach to them, in comparison with those poems which my sister saw fit to publish during her lifetime. Let me, then, say briefly that I conceive some of the com positions herein contained to be up to the level of Christina Rossetti's best work, and the great majority of them to be well up to her average. But, if such is the case (it may be asked), why did she not publish these verses herself ? As to most of the items I see no special reason, unless it be this — that, in point of subject or sentiment, they often resemble, more or less, some of those examples which xii PREFACE she did print ; and she may have thought that the public, while willing to have one such specimen, would be quite contented to lack a second. Christina, I take leave to say, did decidedly discern herself to be a poetess, in the right sense of the word ; but her self-estimate was always a modest one, and she had not the least inclination to thrust herself, her emotions, or her verses, upon the attention of any person. Now that she is gone, leaving behind her a literary reputation not a little covetable, it seems reasonable to apply a different rule to the question. If readers like these additional evidences of her powers, if they entertain much the same opinion of them that I do, well and good ; if not, let the book be regarded as a superfluity, and let her name as a poetess continue to rest upon what she herself elected to give to the world. J Christina's habits of composing were eminently of the spontaneous kind. I question her having ever once deliberated with herself whether or not she would write something or other, and then, after thinking out a subject, having proceeded to treat it in regular spells of work. Instead of this, something impelled her feelings, or " came into her head," and her hand obeyed the dictation. I suppose she scribbled the lines off rapidly enough, and afterwards took what PREFACE xiii ever amount of pains she deemed requisite for keep ing them right in form and expression — for she was quite conscious that a poem demands to be good in execution, as well as genuine in impulse ; but (strange as it seems to say so of a sister who, up to the year 1876, was almost constantly in the same house with me) I cannot remember ever seeing her in the act of composition (I take no count here of the bouts- rimes sonnets of 1848). She consulted nobody, and solicited no advice ; though it is true that with regard to her published volumes — or at any rate the first two of them — my brother volunteered to point out what seemed well adapted for insertion, and what the reverse, and he found her a very willing recipient of his monitions.

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