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Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Notebook Page (two loose leaves, Duke Library)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1879-1880
Scribe: DGR

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

Image of page [1] page: [1]
more about For the Predella of the Picture Dante's Dream
[untitled]
No. I
Dante, being sick ens and crying out gre? in

a troublous dream of his lady's death, is

bewept by his near kinswoman; whom other

ladies lead thence, by reason of her grief, and

awaken him.
No. II
Dante recounts his dream to the

ladies, who have awakened him,

whereto his grieving kinswoman also

hearkens apart.
more about [Marlowe, Chatterton, etc]
Articles.—Marlowe & Chatterton

The Poems of Nero & the latest French muse
more about Dis Manibus
Dîs Manibus
  • Gustave Flaubert, whose honoured rôle
  • Was to be scribe to Nero's soul,
  • And make French flesh to creep & crow
  • O'er Carthaginian Salammbò,
  • Lies here, in body, as in brain,
  • Like Morgue-corpse tumid from the Seine. x
  • What shall be writ above his grave?—
  • Vitellius— Nero's dying stave?
  • “Fui Imperator!” (shall it flow?)
  • 10 Or “Qualis Artifex pereo!”
Transcribed Note (page [1]):

xFlaubert became so bloated latterly that

he could hardly move and had to wear

a special loose costume.

Image of page [1v] page: [1v]
Note: For the first entry here see William Bell Scott, William Blake: Etchings from his Works by William Bell Scott. With Descriptive Text 1878.
more about [W. B. Scott's Catalogue]
Scott's Catalogue Raisonné of Exhibition of Exhibition of

Burlington Fine Arts Club. 1876

Scott's Etchings from Blake's Works, with

descriptive text. 1878
more about [As in a tract of lifeless land]
As in a tract of lifeless land, the scattered

pools of rain-water that for a moment catch

the sky as the traveller passes—so are

the lonely far-apart intervals of living labour in the

life of an idle man. After death, will all

if these brief efforts be worthy, will all be

sky-brimmed water or all a desert

of sand?
more about [This little day a bird that flew to me]
  • This little day—a bird that flew to me—
  • Has swiftly flown out of my hand again.
  • Ah! have I listened to its fugitive strain
  • For what its tidings of the sky may be?
more about [Inkstand loan]
Lent Watts Gris-de-Flandres inkstand
more about [Watts note]
Watts (Smith Biog. Vol. 3
Image of page [2] page: [2]
more about Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
  • This word had Merlin said from of old:—
  • That out of the Oak Tree Shade,
  • In the day of France's direst dule,
  • God's hand should send a Maid.
  • And where Domremy, by Burgundy,
  • Sits crowned with its oakenshaw,
  • Even there Joan d'Arc, the Maid of God's Ark,
  • The light of the day first saw.
  • Where spirits go, what man may know?
  • 10 Yet this may of man be said:—
  • That, when Time is o'er and all hath suffic'd,
  • Shall the world's chief Christ-fire rise to Christ
  • From the ashes of Joan the Maid.
page: [2v]
Transcription Gap: text (to be edited later)
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: nb0001.duke.rad.xml
Copyright: Digital images used with permission of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.