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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI-MISS ROSSETTI.

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An English artist, MR. D. G. ROSSETTI, one of the originators of what is termed the Pre-Raphaelite style of art, or imitation of the early Italian painters, with their vivid colours, minute details, and careful finish, is known also as a poet and translator. In 1861 Mr. Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), in the original metres, together with Dante's Vita Nuova.' In 1870 he issued a volume of 'Poems,' some of which were early productions printed in periodical works. Nearly all of them are in form and colour, subject and style of treatment, similar to the Pre-Raphaelite pictures. The first relates the thoughts and musings of a maiden in heaven while waiting the arrival of her lover from the land of the living.

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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, ́
Nor wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift

For service, meetly worn;

And her hair hanging down her back,
Was yellow like ripe corn.

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on.
By God built over the starry depth,
The which is space begun,

So high that looking downward thence,
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in heaven, across the flood
Of ether like a bridge,
Beneath the tides of day and night,
With flame and darkness ridge,

The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.

Heard hardly some of her new friends
Amid their loving games,
Spake evermore among themselves
Their virginal chaste names:
And the souls mounting up to God,
Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself, and stooped
Out of the circling charm,

Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the liljes lay as if asleep,
Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still

strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path, and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.

The Sea Limits.

Consider the sea's listless chime;
Time's self it is. made andible-
The murmur of the earth's own shell
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's-it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.

As the world's heart of rest and wrath,

Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark when the murmurs of thronged

men

Surge and sink back and surge againStill the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach,
And listen at its lips; they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art;
And earth, sea, man, are all in each.

Mr. Rossetti is a native of London, born in 1828, son of Mr. Gabriel Rossetti, Professor of Italian at King's College, London, and author of a Commentary on Dante (1826-27), who died in 1854, aged seventy-one.

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CHRISTINA GABRIELA ROSSETTI (born in 1830), daughter of the Professor, and sister of the above Dante Gabriel, is also an author, having written Goblin Market, and other Poems,' 1862; Prince's Progress,' 1866; Commonplace and other Short Stories' (in prose), 1870; Nursery Rhyme Book,' 1872, &c.

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ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

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In 1865 appeared a dramatic poem entitled 'Atalanta in Calydon,' founded on the beautiful Greek legend of Calydon, and thoroughly Grecian in form and spirit. This work was hailed, both by the lovers and critics of poetry, as one of the most finished imaginative poems produced since the days of Shelley. It is the produce,' said the Edinburgh Review," not of the tender lyrical faculty which so often waits on sensitive youth, and afterwards fades into the common light of day, nor even of the classical culture of which it is itself a signal illustration, but of an affluent apprehensive genius which, with ordinary care and fair fortune, will take a foremost place in English literature.' In truth, the young poet had by this one bound placed himself in the first rank of our poets. His next work. Chastelard' (1865), was a tragedy founded on the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the unfortunate young chevalier who accompanied the queen from France, and who fell a victim to his romantic and extravagant passion for Mary. The subject was a perilous one for the drama, even when handled with the utmost delicacy; but MR. SWINBURNE treated it with voluptuous warmth; while his portrait of the heroine, whom he represented as cruel, relentless, and licentious, shocked the admirers of the queen. In 1866, appeared a volume of Poems and Ballads,' which was considered so strongly objectionable, that Mr. Swinburne's publishers, Messrs. Moxon & Co., withdrew it from circulation.

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To the critical outcry against it, the poet replied in a pamphlet of *Notes' protesting against the prudery of his assailants; and one of his friends, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in a Criticism on Swinburne's poems and Ballads,' pleaded that in fact Mr. Swinburne's mind appeared to be very like a tabula rasa on moral and religious subjects, so occupied is it with instincts, feelings, perceptions, and a sense of natural or artistic fitness and harmony!' The subsequent works of This image of the sea-shell had been previously used both by Landor and Words

worth.

the poet are 'A Song of Italy,' 1867; William Blake, a Critical Essay,' 1867; Siena, a poem, 1868; Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic,' 1870; and Songs before Sunrise,' 1871. He has also edited selections from the poems of Byron and Celeridge, and contributed a few admirable critical essays to literary journals.

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Mr. Swinburne is a native of London, son of Admiral Swinburne, and born in 1837. He received his earlier education in France and at Eton; in 1857 he was entered a commoner of Balliol College, Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree. In his twentythird year he published two plays, 'The Queen Mother' and 'Rosamund,' whcih exhibited literary power, but are crude and immature productions. We subjoin some extracts from Calydon.' In these may be noted one drawback, which has come to be a mannerism of the poet-a too great proneness to alliteration. I will sometimes affect the letter,' says Holofernes, for it argues facility;' but in highly poetical and melodious lines like the following, it is a defect.

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Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven,
Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart,
Being treble in thy divided deity,

A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot
Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand
To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range.
Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep;
Hear now and help, and lift no violent hand,

But favourable and fair as thine eye's beam

Hidden and shewn in heaven; for I all night

Amid the king's hounds and the hunting men

Have wrought and worshipped toward thee; nor shall man
See goodlier hounds or deadlier hedge of spears;

But for the end, that lies uureached as yet

Between the hands and on the knees of gods.

O fair-faced sun, killing the stars and dews

And dreams and desolation of the night!

Rise up. shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow
Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven,
And burn and break the dark about thy ways,
Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair
Lighten as flame above that flameless shell
Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world,
And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth
Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet
Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs,
And foam in reddening flakes, and flying flowers
Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs,
Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave
With salt tresses cleaving lock to 'ock.
All gold, or shuddering or unfurrowed snow;
And all the winds about thee with their wings,
And fountain-heads of all the watered world.

Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven, And Madness, risen from hell; Strength, without hands to smite; Love, that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light,

And Life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand

Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of years; And froth and drift of the sea:

And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be

Chorus.

In the honses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after,

And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a

span

With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the
south

They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him a light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips be travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep

In 1874 Mr. Swinburne published an epic drama or tragedy, 'Bothwell,' continuing the history of Mary, Queen of Scots, after the episode of Chastelard.' This tragedy of Bothwell' is a most voluminous work-upwards of 15,000 lines-and with a numerous dramatis persona, including, besides Darnley and the Queen, the four Maries, Rizzio, John Knox, the Regent Murray, French and English ambassadors, &c. Though much too long and deficient in variety of situations and incidents for an English play, 'Bothwell' is a powerful production-the most masterly of Mr. Swinburne's dramatic works. Mary he has drawn in colours dark as the portraiture by Froude-as treacherous, passionate, fierce, cruel, and sensuousa second Lady Macbeth. The historical facts, and much of the language of Knox and others, are skilfully introduced and interwoven with the passionate scenes; while occasionally French and English songs relieve the long dialogues.

Carberry Hill: Parting of Bothwell and Queen Mary.

QUEEN. Do not spenk yet: a word should burst my heart;

It is hollow crystal full of tears

That even a breath might break, and they be spilt,

And life run out with them; no diamond now,

But weaker than of wax. Life of that heart,

There is but one thing hath no remedy,

Death; all ills else have end or hope of end,
And time to work their worst before time change:
This death hath none; there is all hope shut fast,
All chance bound up for ever: change nor time

Can help nor comfort this. You shall not die;
I can hold tast no sense of thought but this.
You shall not.

BOTHWELL. Well, being sundered, we may live,
And living meet; and here to hold the field
Were but a deadly victory, and my hand

The mockery of a conqueror's; we should pass
No less their prisoners from the field thus won
Than from these lists defeated. You do well;
They dare not urge or strain the power they have
To bring the prisoner where my witness borne
Might shew them parcel of the deed and guilt
For which they rise up to lay hold on me
As upright men of doom, and with pure hands
To hale me to their judgment. I will go,

Till good time bring me back; and you that stay,
Keep faith with me.

QUEEN. O how does one break faith?

What are they that are faithless? By my love,
I cannot tell or think how I should lie,
Should live and lie to you that are my faith,
My soul, my spirit, my very and nly god,
My truth and trust that makes me true of heart,
My life that feeds, and light that lightens me,
My breath and blood of living. Doth God think
How I shall be without you? what strange breath
Shall my days draw? what strange blood feed my life,
When this life that is love is gone from them,
And this light lost? Where shall my true life go,
And by what far ways follow to find love,

Fly where love will?

Where will you turn from me? BOTHWELL. Hence will I to Dunbar, and thence again There is no way but northward, and to ship

From the north islands; thence betimes abroad,

By land or sea, to lurk and find my life

TIH the wheel turn.

QUEEN. Ah God, that we were set
Far out at sea alone by storm and night,
To drive together on one end, and know
If life or death would give us good or ill,
And night or day receive, and heaven or earth
Forget us or remember! He comes back:
Here is the end.

BOTHWELL. But till Time change his tune:

No more nor further. We shall find our day.

QUEEN. Have we not found? I know not what we shall, But what hath been and is, and whence they are,

God knows if now I know not-he is here.

Re-enter KIRKALDY.

KIRKALDY. Madam, the Lords return by me this word With them you must go back to Edinburgh,

And there be well entreated as of friends:

And for the Duke, they are with one mind content
He should part hence for safe and present flight:

But here may tarry not, or pass not free.

This is the last word from them by my mouth.

QUEEN. Ay is it, sir; the last word I shall hearLast in mine ear for ever: no command

Nor threat of man shall give car to more

That have heard this.-Will you not go, my Lord?

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