Wood, Esther; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel [Ill.]: Dante Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite movement (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1894)

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POETRY OF DANTE ROSSETTI.
The “Pre-Raphaelite” in Literature—The Complexity of
Talent in an Age of Re-birth—The Restoration of
Romance in England—The Latin and the Saxon in
Rossetti—Latin Diction for the Sonnets as Reflective
Poetry—Saxon Diction for the Ballads as Dramatic
Poetry—“The House of Life”—Treatment of Romantic
Love—Illustrations of Sonnet Structure—Miscellaneous
Lyrics—“The Portrait,” “The Stream’s Secret,” “Dante
at Verona,” “The Staff and Scrip”—The Ballads—“The
White Ship,” “The King’s Tragedy,” “Sister Helen,”
“Rose Mary,” “The Bride’s Prelude,” “The Blessed
Damozel”—“A Last Confession”—“Jenny”—Relation
of Rossetti’s Poetry to his Painting.

THE poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti lies
apart from the main current of contem-
porary verse, both in its highly special-
ized quality of thought and language, and in the
conditions and circumstances of its production.
Inasmuch as he followed openly the profession of
a painter, pursuing poetry, for the most part, as
a recreative rather than a principal study (though
never with less seriousness than his accepted voca-