[Sonnet about Cyprus]

The poem's existence is uncertain. WMR writes: “...Rossetti did in fact write some verses—I presume a sonnet—about Cyprus, of all places in the world. He knew and cared nothing about Cyprus, nor about Lord Beaconsfield's supposed stroke of policy in securing in that year [1878] the administration of the Island, and the sonnet could thus hardly escape being a bad one. Mr. Watts undertook to send the sonnet to the Athenæum, but withdrew it on the alleged ground that the Pall Mall Gazette contained another poem on the same theme—a reason which always looked to me odd, and which may now yield to the more cogent reason that the sonnet was a visibly bad one” ( Memoir, 31 ).