DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61290#0316
264 DANTE ROSSETTI
With this general division of the subject-matter
of Rossetti’s poetry, the classification of its metrical
cast and forms of diction will be singularly parallel.
Most of his finest compositions might be distin-
guished as purely Saxon or pre-eminently Latin
poems; and it is notable that the more intimately
subjective and analytic the thought within, the
more persistently does it assume the Latin garb ;
while as the imagination ranges from the intro-
spection of the hyper-conscious self, and finds, on
the heights of common human feeling and aspira-
tion, a larger and a freer air, the mode passes into
the more keen and rarified Saxon speech. No
other English poet has resolved the breadth and
simplicity of the Gothic, and the depth and in-
tensity of the Italian habit of expression, into such
distinctive poetic vehicles. But at the same time
few have blended the diverse elements of the
modern English tongue into the harmony and
sonority with which Rossetti’s music thrills when
he tempers the sharper Saxon with a deep under-
tone of polysyllabic song; or stirs the languorous
pulses of a sonnet with some swift cadence of
familiar words. He had the finest perception of
national and racial properties of form and rhythm ;
and discerning the characteristics of the poetry of
action in the literature of the north, and the poetry
of reflection in the literature of the south, he cast
his great historical lyrics in the highest narrative
With this general division of the subject-matter
of Rossetti’s poetry, the classification of its metrical
cast and forms of diction will be singularly parallel.
Most of his finest compositions might be distin-
guished as purely Saxon or pre-eminently Latin
poems; and it is notable that the more intimately
subjective and analytic the thought within, the
more persistently does it assume the Latin garb ;
while as the imagination ranges from the intro-
spection of the hyper-conscious self, and finds, on
the heights of common human feeling and aspira-
tion, a larger and a freer air, the mode passes into
the more keen and rarified Saxon speech. No
other English poet has resolved the breadth and
simplicity of the Gothic, and the depth and in-
tensity of the Italian habit of expression, into such
distinctive poetic vehicles. But at the same time
few have blended the diverse elements of the
modern English tongue into the harmony and
sonority with which Rossetti’s music thrills when
he tempers the sharper Saxon with a deep under-
tone of polysyllabic song; or stirs the languorous
pulses of a sonnet with some swift cadence of
familiar words. He had the finest perception of
national and racial properties of form and rhythm ;
and discerning the characteristics of the poetry of
action in the literature of the north, and the poetry
of reflection in the literature of the south, he cast
his great historical lyrics in the highest narrative