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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Students of Rossetti have felt a certain amount of curiosity about the origin of the stanza of “The Blessed Damozel.” The stanza itself is a matter of no great importance, but its study brings up two rather interesting points: (1) it throws some light on the development of one poet's feeling for verse; (2) it suggests the limitations of our ordinary metrical terminology. Described in conventional terms of accents, feet, and rhyme scheme, Rossetti's stanza is the stanza of “The Village Blacksmith” (which has a gratuitous rhyme in stanza 1, line 3), “The Slave's Dream,” and “The Music Grinders.” Yet, so far as I know, no critic has suggested the influence of Longfellow or Holmes, although the three American poems were published respectively in 1839, 1842, and 1836, and “The Blessed Damozel” in 1850. Nor do I think that, quite apart from the subject matter, any critic could mistake a stanza of “The Blessed Damozel” for the work of either Longfellow or Holmes. Waller, rejecting an Italian original suggested by Mégroz, mentions the six-line stanzas of “The Ancient Mariner,” but doesn't seem to think highly of his own suggestion.
page 1050 note 1 R. D. Waller, “The Blessed Damozel,” MLR, xxvi (April, 1931), 139.
page 1050 note 2 Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, iii, 310. Saintsbury goes on to discuss the effect of the rhyme scheme.
page 1051 note 3 Ellis, Collected Works (1911), Introduction, p. xv.
page 1051 note 4 “The Village Blacksmith is in conventional ballad measure, but it is not an imitation of the folk ballad tradition.” G. W. Allen, American Prosody (1935), p. 167.
page 1052 note 5 R. D. Waller, The Rossetti Family, 1824–54 (1932), p. 191.
page 1052 note 6 The word ballad in the title cannot be taken as evidence. Its early title, apparently, was “The Dutchman's Wager.”
page 1052 note 7 P. F. Baum, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, An Analytical List of Manuscripts in the Duke University Library (1931), p. 17.
page 1052 note 8 There is no reeling or dancing in Bürger; in fact, no stars at all at this point.
Haho! haho! ha hopp hopp hopp!
Fort ging's im sausenden Galopp;
Der volle Mond schien helle;
Wie ritten die Toten so schnelle!—
page 1054 note 9 R. M. Alden, English Verse (1926), p. 7.
page 1054 note 10 There is one interesting line in the ballad from Festus, mentioned above: “In a dark cane, with one weak light.” Otherwise, the metrical handling is conventional.
page 1054 note 11 The second line of the famous symphony of names is debatable. If Margaret is a dactyl, the line is most unusual. Or did Rossetti say Marg'ret? Saintsbury feels that Margaret “is not indisputably an integral dactyl.” (History of English Prosody, iii, 523 n.)
page 1055 note 12 The revisions would have to be completely reconsidered in the light of the manuscript in the Morgan Library if that manuscript should be established as genuinely early. It is dated 1847. Knickerbocker (Rossetti's “The Blessed Damozel,” Studies in Philology, 29, July, 1932, p. 496) says that “it will perhaps suffice here to say that the manuscript is certainly genuine and that the text apparently represents the earliest extant version of the poem.” On the other hand, Sanford has shown conclusively, I think, that the manuscript is later than it purports to be and probably very considerably later. (J. A. Sanford, “The Morgan Library Manuscript of Rossetti's ‘The Blessed Damozel’,” Studies in Philology, 35, July, 1938). If it is later than 1850, it has no bearing on this particular discussion.