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ith several of his utterances, and sympathized with others, apart from strict agreement. By Patmore: "The Seasons." This choice little poem was volunteered to "The Germ" in September, after the author had read our prospectus, which impressed him favourably. He withheld his name, much to our disappointment, having resolved to do so in all instances where something of his might be published pending the issue of a new volume. By Christina Rossetti: "Dream Land." Though my sister was only just nineteen when this remarkable lyric was printed, she had already made some slight appearance in published type (not to speak of the privately printed "Verses" of 1847), as two small poems of hers had been inserted in "The Athenaeum" in October 1848. "Dream Land" was written in April 1849, before "The Germ" was thought of; and it may be as well to say that all my sister's contributions to this magazine were produced without any reference to publication in that or in any particular form. By Dante G. Rossetti: "My Sister's Sleep." This purports to be No. 1 of "Songs of One Household." I do not much think that Dante Rossetti ever wrote any other poem which would have been proper to such a series. "My Sister's Sleep" was composed very soon after he emerged from a merely juvenile stage of work. I believe that it dates before "The Blessed Damozel," and therefore before May 1847. It is not founded upon any actual event affecting the Rossetti family, nor any family of our acquaintance. As I have said in my Memoir of my brother (1895), the poem was shown, perhaps early in 1848, by Major Calder Campbell to the editress of the "Belle Assemblee," who heartily admired it, but, for one reason or another, did not publish it. This composition is somewhat noticeable on more grounds than one; not least as being in a metre which was not much in use until it became famous in Tennyson's "In Memoriam," published in 1850, and of course totally unknown to Rossetti when he wrote "My Sister's Sleep." In later years my brother viewed this early work with some distaste, and he only reluctantly reprinted it in his "Poems," 1870. He then wholly omitted the four stanzas 7, 8, 12, 13, beginning: "Silence was speaking," "I said, full knowledge," "She stood a moment," "Almost unwittingly"; and he made some other verbal alterations.{2} It will be observed that this poem was written long before the Praeraphaelite movement began. None the less it shows in an eminen
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