title  See WMR's note (1911).
Titled âSibylla Palmiferaâ in the 1868 printing, and âSibylla Palmifera. (For a Picture.)â in the 1869-1870 texts. The received title was added in 1881.
4-6Â Â drew, draw: DGR regularly puns this word and its cognates.
5-7Â Â Compare DGR's The House of Life sonnet The Portrait lines 7-8.
9Â Â This: in one sense the pronoun refers to the sonnet's companion painting, in another to the âconceptionâ of the idealized woman figured in the painting and the sonnet's text.
10Â Â Thy: ârefers directly to the poetâ (Baum, The House of Life 183 ). In fact the reference is ambiguous (as it is in line 6). This second person could as easily be the reader. The phrase âvoice and hand shake stillâ distinctly recalls Dante's Paradiso XIII. 78; the allusion is important since the Dante passage involves one of his central statements about artistic practise.
11Â Â This figure recalls Botticelli's idealized female figures: Primavera, e.g., or The Birth of Venus.