Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/475

 10 s. vui. NOV. 16, loo:.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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PALGKAVE'S 'GOLDEN TBEASTJKY ' (10 S. viii. 147, 236, 351). 'The Blessed Damozel ' was published four times in England in Rossetti's lifetime. It originally appeared in the second number of The Germ, 1850. It was republished in The Oxford and Cam- bridge Magazine for November, 1856, and again in ' Poems,' 1870, and ' Poems,' 1881. The variations between the first two versions may be seen not quite accurately printed in the late William Sharp's ' Dante Gabriel Rossetti : a Record and a Study,' 1882, p. 338. The Germ version is identical with that in the Oxford University Press edition of ' The Golden Treasury,' with the excep- tion that in the fourth line of the first stanza there should be no comma after " water." The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine version differs much from its predecessor. The two stanzas quoted by W. B. run thus :

I.

The blessed Damozel lean'd out

From the gold bar of Heaven ; Her eyes knew more of rest and shade

Than waters still'd at even ; She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

II.

And still she bow'd above the vast Waste sea of worlds that swarm, Until her bosom must have made

The bar she lean'd on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep

Along her bended arm.

In the 'Poems' of 1870 and 1881 these stanzas correspond with those printed in the ' Second Series ' of Palgrave's book, except that the words " lean'd " and " still'd " are printed " leaned " and " stilled," and the latter is the spelling followed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti in more recent editions of his brother's ' Works.' It is a pity that the three principal versions of the poem have not been printed in parallel columns for the benefit of students of Rossetti.

In addition to the four English editions published in Rossetti's lifetime, an edition was issued in the Tauchnitz series in 1870 with Rossetti's sanction, which contained an important variation in the seventh stanza :

Around her lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims.

A private impression of some of the poems, including ' The Blessed Damozel,' was also struck off in 1869.

I cannot give an authoritative reason for the divergences between the two versions mentioned by W. B., but I imagine the copyright question may have had something

to do with them. The original version printed in The Germ is out of copyright ; that in the recent editions of the ' Poems ' is not. This fact may account for the Oxford University Press printing the earlier version, and Messrs. Macmillan the later.

W. F. PBIDEAUX.

The Oxford University Press appears to have followed the first version of ' The Blessed Damozel,' as printed in The Germ in 1850. This is reprinted in Foulis's " Roses of Parnassus" series (1903), where the stanzas your correspondent quotes read as he gives them from the Oxford ' Golden Treasury.' Mr. Quiller - Couch also, for reasons " hard for the non-elect to under- stand," adopts The Germ version in his ' Oxford Book of English Poetry.' In the American edition of Rossetti's poems (Bos- ton, 1870) which follows exactly, I believe, the first English edition the stanzas re- ferred to read, as they do also in the edition of 1898, as in Macmillan's ' Golden Treasury (Second Series ') ; but other stanzas appear in other forms in editions subsequent to 1870. Stanza VIII. of The Germ version (VII. in later ones) has been, perhaps, most frequently revised, j In The Germ it runs thus :

Heard hardly, some of her new friends, Playing at holy games,

Spake, gentle-mouthed, among themselves, Their virginal chaste names ;

And the souls, mounting up to God, Went by her like thin flames.

In the 1870 edition of the ' Poems,' 1. 2 of this appears as " Amid their loving games " ; and in 1. 3 "gentle-mouthed" is discarded for " evermore." In the edition of 1898 (the next I have) the first four lines of this stanza run thus :

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remembered names ;

but this (naturally enough) does not seem to have satisfied Rossetti, for in Macmillan's ' Golden Treasury ' they have undergone further revision, and read : Around her, lovers, newly met

In joy no sorrow claims. Spoke evermore among themselves Their rapturous new names.

It is a pity Rossetti did not let the 1870 version alone. C. C. B.

W. B. will find the details he seeks con- cerning earlier and later versions in W. M. Rossetti's introduction to an edition of ' The Blessed Damozel ' published by Duckworth