Rossetti Archive Editorial Annotations

Body's Beauty

Basis text: Line numbering scheme for annotations keyed to 1881 Ballads and Sonnets text.

Glosses:

title  See WMR's note (1911)

4  The line draws a subtle relation between two kinds of lust (for wealth and for sensual pleasure).

5-6  The lines anticipate the portrait of Leonardo's Mona Lisa elaborated by Pater in his famous essay (which was published in the Fortnightly Review in 1871, after DGR's poem and painting had appeared).

7  Draws: the wordplay picks up from the related puns in the companion sonnet (Soul's Beauty).

9  The line first named “Rose, foxglove, poppy” as “her flowers.” Rose signifies (sensual) love; foxglove, insincerity and perhaps wishing (it is also the flower traditionally thought to house souls of the dead); the poppy signifies sleep.

14  The line can scarcely not recall the sestet of “Life-in-Love”, as well as that sonnet's general treatment of the hair motif. The two sonnets evoke strongly conflicting sets of images and associations.