The House of Life by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Sonnet-Sequence Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Edited Text and Apparatus
- List of Abbreviations and Sigla
- Introduction
- Texts and Notes
- Part I Youth and Change
- Part II Change and Fate
- Appendix One Dating and Ordonnance
- Appendix Two Poems: Proof States
- Appendix Three Poems: Chronology 1868–71
- Appendix Four Poems: Bibliographical Summaries
- Appendix Five Ballads and Sonnets (1881): Chronology 1879–82
- Appendix Six Ballads and Sonnets: Bibliographical Summaries
- Appendix Seven Locations of Sources: Concise Survey of Manuscripts, Proofs and Other Documents
- Appendix Eight Unpublished and Excluded Sonnets
- Bibliography of Works Cited or Consulted
Part II - Change and Fate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Edited Text and Apparatus
- List of Abbreviations and Sigla
- Introduction
- Texts and Notes
- Part I Youth and Change
- Part II Change and Fate
- Appendix One Dating and Ordonnance
- Appendix Two Poems: Proof States
- Appendix Three Poems: Chronology 1868–71
- Appendix Four Poems: Bibliographical Summaries
- Appendix Five Ballads and Sonnets (1881): Chronology 1879–82
- Appendix Six Ballads and Sonnets: Bibliographical Summaries
- Appendix Seven Locations of Sources: Concise Survey of Manuscripts, Proofs and Other Documents
- Appendix Eight Unpublished and Excluded Sonnets
- Bibliography of Works Cited or Consulted
Summary
Sonnet LX.
Transfigured Life.
As growth of form or momentary glance
In a child's features will recall to mind
The father's with the mother's face combin’d,
Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
Till in the blended likeness now we find
A separate man's or woman's countenance:
So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
Its very parents, evermore expand
To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann’d;
And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
There comes the sound as of abundant rain.
Date of Publication: 1881, B&S
Date of Composition: 1880: WMR gives ‘after 1872’ in ClassLists and ‘1873’ in Works, but DGR sent versions of this sonnet in two letters of Fall 1880; I found no evidence to support any earlier date. The Bodleian MS, dated by JM ‘16.11.80’, seems to have arrived with the identically-dated Sonnet 56, both enclosures with DGR's letter, also dated by JM ‘16.11.80’ though Bryson dates it the next day: this letter, WEF 80.352 (Bryson121), ended with the postscript, ‘I’ll transcribe a Sonnet or two. I need not say who is the model of the 2nd.’ See notes to Sonnet 56. This sonnet was also transcribed verso on DGR's letter to Philip Bourke Marston, dated (by an unknown hand on the LC MS ‘Oct.24 1880’, and by WEF for his 81.37 [c.23 January 1881].
MS Sources:
Duke Notebook IV ﹛printed in PFB 1): 48﹜; Princeton Sonnets & Fragments fol. 15a
‘As the features of a child recall now the father and now the mother, and yet are different from both; so in a work may be traced in a new form this or that passion or experience of the author's life, though all be turned to a fresh purpose.’ In the Princeton version, the words ‘in a new form’ are omitted.
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- The House of Life by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Sonnet-SequenceA Variorum Edition with Introduction and Notes, pp. 144 - 226Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007