he naked depth is black between.

Rossetti wrote a valuable letter on his scheme for the completion of
_The Bride's Prelude_:

I was much pleased with your verdict on _The Bride's
Prelude_. I think the poem is saved by its picturesqueness,
but that otherwise the story up to the point reached is too
purely repellent. I have the sequel quite clear in my mind,
and in it the mere passionate frailty of Aloyse's first love
would be followed by a true and noble love, rendered
calamitous by Urscelyn, who then (having become a powerful
soldier of fortune) solicits the hand of Aloyse. Thus the
horror which she expresses against him to her sister on the
bridal morning would be fully justified. Of course, Aloyse
would confess her fault to her second lover whose love
would, nevertheless, endure. The poem would gain so greatly
by this sequel that I suppose I must set to and finish it
one day, old as it is. I suppose it would be doubled, but
hardly more. I hate long poems.

I quite think the card-playing passage the best thing--as a
unit--in the poem: but your opinion encourages my own, that
it fails nowhere of good material. It certainly moves slowly
as you say, and this is quite against the rule I follow. But
here was no life condensed in an episode; but a story which
had necessarily to be told step by step, and a situation
which had unavoidably to be anatomised. If it is not
unworthy to appear with my best things, that is all I hope
for it. You have pitched curiously upon some of my favourite
touches, and very coincidently with Watts's views.

Early in 1881, he wrote:

I am writing a ballad on the death of James I. of Scots. It
is already twice the length of _The White Ship_, and has a
good slice still to come. It is called _The King's Tragedy_,
and is a ripper I can tell you!

The other day I got from Italy a paper containing a really
excellent and exceptional notice of my poems, written by the
author of a volume also sent me containing, among other
translations from the English, _Jenny, Last Confession_,
etc.

I have been re-reading, after many years, Keats's _Otho the
Great_, and find it a much better thing than I remembered,
though only a draft.

I am much exercised as to what you mention as to a _Michael
Scott_ scheme of C