Page:The New Life (Rossetti 1899) Siddal ed.djvu/123

&#160;&#160;&#160;The New Life (Rossetti 1899) Aldus recto.png ''all people; and not only while herself present, but, by memory of her, operated wondrously. The second begins here, "Merely the sight;" the third here, "From all her acts."''

Thereafter on a day, I began to consider that which I had said of my lady: to wit, in these two sonnets aforegone: and becoming aware that I had not spoken of her immediate effect on me at that especial time, it seemed to me that I had spoken defectively. Whereupon I resolved to write somewhat of the manner wherein I was then subject to her influence, and of what her influence then was. And conceiving that I should not be able to say these things in the small compass of a sonnet, I began therefore a poem with this beginning:—

hath so long possessed me for his own

And made his lordship so familiar

That he, who at first irked me, is now grown