posted October 02, 2007 04:02 PM
Linda quoted part of Dante Rossetti's poem, Sudden Light, in Star Signs. However, the last stanza she quoted doesn't seem to belong to Rossetti, at least in any of the published versions of this poem. Was this last stanza (beginning with "though age, faith or creed may keep us now apart") written by Linda instead? I like it more than the two published stanzas attributed to Rossetti. Here's what I've found:Here's the Rossetti poem as it was published in 1863:
Sudden Light
"I HAVE been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore."
There are two final stanzas attributed to Rossetti, the first published in 1870:
"Then, now,—perchance again! . . . .
O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
Shall we not lie as we have lain
Thus for Love's sake,
And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?"
The other was published in 1881, replacing the one from 1870:
"Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more? "