Excerpt: ...together, alive from the abyss, Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss; And pity of self through all made broken moan Which said, 'For once, for once, for once alone ' And still Love sang, and what he sang was this: - III 'O ye, all ye that walk in Willow-wood, That walk with hollow faces burning white; What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood, What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night, Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite Your lips to that their unforgotten food, Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light Alas the bitter banks in Willowwood, With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red: Alas if ever such a pillow could Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, - Better all life forget her than this thing, That Willowwood should hold her wandering ' IV So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose Together cling through the wind's wellaway Nor change at once, yet near the end of day The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, - So when the song died did the kiss unclose; And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey As its grey eyes; and if it ever may Meet mine again I know not if Love knows. Only I know that I leaned low and drank A long draught from the water where she sank, Her breath and all her tears and all her soul: And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace, Till both our heads were in his aureole. WITHOUT HER What of her glass without her? The blank grey There where the pool is blind of the moon's face. Her dress without her? The tossed empty space Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away. Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place Without her? Tears, ah me for love's good grace, And cold forgetfulness of...

Few collections of verse have been associated with such drama as these poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82). Much of this work had disappeared in 1862 when it was buried with Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal, only to be brought back to the light of day in 1869. Rossetti added further poems and the work first appeared in 1870. The full impact of the sexually explicit material was soon felt. In his article 'The Fleshly School of Poetry', the writer Robert Williams Buchanan denounced Rossetti as corrupt and decadent. Others joined the chorus of disapproving voices. Steeped in remorse about his treatment of his wife, and riddled with guilt about his affair with Jane Morris, Rossetti broke down and attempted suicide. Behind all the sensation, however, lies Rossetti's subtle and complex literary intelligence attempting, many years before Freud, to find honest modes of expression for the central importance of the libido.

New and definitive edition of Rossetti's masterpiece, with full notes and apparatus. Described by W.S. Blunt as 'the greatest of the all the great Victorian poems', this sequence of 103 sonnets was composed between 1847 and 1881, and finally published complete in Ballads and Sonnets just six months before Rossetti's death. These passionate celebrations of the ecstasy of love threatened by change and Fate inspired the Aesthetes and Decadents of the eighties and nineties, leading to Walter Pater's Mona Lisa and Oscar Wilde's Salome. This new edition of Rossetti's poetic masterpiece is presented here with Introduction, Notes and definitive texts and date. All variants are given for each poem (some sonnets exist in as many as eight versions), and each sonnet is given a documented date of composition and first publication. The illustrations include some rarely-seen images, notably a self-portrait by Elizabeth Siddal, the poet's wife, in whose coffin he placed his original poems, only to exhume them eight years later. ROGER C. LEWIS is Emeritus Professor of English, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada.