Page:The New Life (Rossetti 1899) Siddal ed.djvu/93

&#160;&#160;&#160;The New Life (Rossetti 1899) Aldus recto.png that there was herein matter for poesy, I resolved that I would write certain rhymes in the which should be contained all that those ladies had said. And because I would willingly have spoken to them if it had not been for discreetness, I made in my rhymes as though I had spoken and they had answered me. And thereof I wrote two sonnets; in the first of which I addressed them as I would fain have done; and in the second related their answer, using the speech that I had heard from them, as though it had been spoken unto myself. And the sonnets are these:—

that thus wear a modest countenance

With lids weigh'd down by the heart's heaviness,

Whence come you, that among you every face

Appears the same, for its pale troubled glance?

Have you beheld my lady's face, perchance,