" No. 4, "Sheer Waste," was not a _bouts-rimes_
performance. It was chiefly the outcome of an early afternoon spent
lazily in Regent's Park.
By Walter H. Deverell: "The Light Beyond." These sonnets are not of
very finished execution, but they have a dignified sustained tone and
some good lines. Had Deverell lived a little longer, he might
probably have proved that he had some genuine vocation as a poet, no
less than a decided pictorial faculty. He died young in February
1854.
By Dante G. Rossetti: "The Blessed Damozel." As to this celebrated
poem much might be said; but I shall not say it here, partly because
I wrote an Introduction to a reprint (published by Messrs. Duckworth
and Co. in 1898) of the "Germ" version of the poem, which is the
earliest version extant, and in that Introduction I gave a number of
particulars forestalling what I could now set down. I will however
take this opportunity of correcting a blunder into which I fell in
the Introduction above mentioned. I called attention to "calm" and
"warm," which make a "cockney rhyme" in stanza 9 of this "Germ"
version; and I said that, in the later version printed in "The Oxford
and Cambridge Magazine" in 1856, a change in the line was made,
substituting "swam" for "calm," and that the cockneyism, though
shuffled, was not thus corrected.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50