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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: John Keats (British Library fair copy)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880
Type of Manuscript: fair copy

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

Image of page endpaper page: endpaper
Note: Bookplate with standing female angel blowing trumpet and seated female angel. Between the two figures is a flowing banner on which is inscribed the owner's name. Below the figures and the ower's name is an inscribed poem.
THOMAS

JAMES WISE

HIS BOOK

  • BOOKS BRING ME FRIENDS
  • WHERE'ER ON EARTH I BE.
  • SOLACE OF SOLITUDE&
  • BONDS OF SOCIETY!
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Note: blank page
Manuscript Addition: ASHLEY MS. / 3477.
Editorial Description: British Library catalog number.
Note: Pages i verso to ii are blank.
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Note: Engraving of John Keats
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Sonnet

on

John Keats

by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

First published in ”Ballads and Sonnets“

1881





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Note: The printed copy of the poem taken from the Ballads and Sonnets text (page 316) has been omitted from this transcription.
Transcription Gap: Ballads and Sonnets text (may be found elsewhere)
more about this work
IV. JOHN KEATS
  • The weltering London ways where children weep
  • And girls whom none call maidens laugh,— strange road
  • Miring his outward steps, who inly trode
  • The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep:—
  • Even such his life's cross-paths; till deathly deep
  • He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,
  • Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
  • In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
  • O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
  • 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
  • Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
  • Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
  • But rumour'd in water, while the fame of it
  • Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore.
Transcription Gap: Letter to Watts (relevance to poem in question)
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 4-1880.blms.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library