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at all if there had been any danger of his taking to the modern habit eventually--treating material as product, and shooting it all out as it comes. Of course, however, he wouldn't; he was getting always choicer and simpler, and my favourite piece in his works is _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--I suppose about his last. As to Shelley, it is really a mercy that he has not been hatching yearly universes till now. He might, I suppose; for his friend Trelawny still walks the earth without great-coat, stockings, or underclothing, this Christmas (1879). In criticism, matters are different, as to seasons of production.... I am writing hurriedly and horribly in every sense. Write on the subject again and I'll try to answer better. All greetings to you. P.S.--I think your reference to Keats new, and on a high level It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self- chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days of boyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as cockney as Keats _could_ be. Here it is,-- Through one, years since damned and forgot Who stabbed backs by the Quarter, Here lieth one who, while Time's stream Still runs, as God hath taught her, Bearing man's fame to men, hath writ His name upon that water. Well, the rhyme is not so bad as Keats's Ear Of Goddess of Theraea!-- nor (tell it not in Gath!) as--- I wove a crown before her For her I love so dearly, A garland for Lenora! Is it possible the laurel crown should now hide a venerated and impeccable ear which was once the ear of a cockney? This letter was written in 1879, and the opening clauses of it were no doubt penned under the impression, then strong on Rossetti's mind, that his first volume of poems would prove to be his only one; but when, within two years afterwards he completed _Rose Mary_, and wrote _The King's Tragedy_ and _The White Ship_, this accession of material dissipated the notion that a man does much his best work before twenty-five. It can hardly escape the reader that though Rossetti's earlier volume displayed a surprising maturity, the subsequent one exhibited as a whole infinitely more power and feeling, range of sympathy, and knowledge of life. The poet's dramatic instinct
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