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From: http://rossettiarchive.org/ The Blessed Damozel is DGR's single most important literary work. It constitutes DGR's most important (and evolving) interpretation of his Dantean inheritance. He was involved with it for nearly the whole of his working life: in 1847 he produced the... more
Reviewed by megi Oct 15 2005, 10:48am ( 1 review ) • rossettiarchive.org
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Rated by megi on Oct 15 2005, 10:48am
From: http://rossettiarchive.org/ The Blessed Damozel is DGR's single most important literary work. It constitutes DGR's most important (and evolving) interpretation of his Dantean inheritance. He was involved with it for nearly the whole of his working life: in 1847 he produced the first textual state of the work, a poem that went through a great many subsequent revisions and changes. Then in 1871 he began work on the pictorial rendering of the subject, and he continued to work on studies and different versions of this picture for the next ten years. As a "double work of art" it is unusual in DGR's corpus because the poems preceded the pictorial treatments. * The blessed damozel leaned out * From the gold bar of Heaven; * Her eyes were deeper than the depth * Of waters stilled at even; * She had three lilies in her hand, * And the stars in her hair were seven. * Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, * No wrought flowers did adorn, * But a white rose of Mary's gift, * For service meetly worn;10 * Her hair that lay along her back * Was yellow like ripe corn. * Herseemed she scarce had been a day * One of God's choristers; * The wonder was not yet quite gone * From that still look of hers; * Albeit, to them she left, her day * Had counted as ten years. * (To one, it is ten years of years. * . . . Yet now, and in this place,20 * Surely she leaned o'er me--her hair * Fell all about my face. . . . * Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves. * The whole year sets apace.)
