Rossetti MS, 191
*2
*5 What Transgressions I commit
Are for thy Transgressions fit.
They thy Harlots, thou their slave ;
And my bed becomes their Grave.
*3
*9 Poor, pale, pitiable form *
That I follow in a storm ;
Iron tears & groans of lead
Bind around my aching head.
- 5—*8 This stanza was written after the following one. *6 Trans-
gressions] transgression WBY. *8 my] thy WBY *g Cp. Jerusalem,
f. 67, 11. 43, 44 :—
- ' O thou poor Human Form ! said she, O thou poor child of woe !
- Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah, why compel me to bind thee?'
- I2 Followed in the MS. Book by the partly illegible but unerased
stanza : —
- ' And let [us go] to the [? day]
- With many wiles
- Woman that does not love your [? wiles]
- Will never [? win back] your smiles.'
xxxviii
When a Man has Married a Wife, he finds out whether
Her knees & elbows are only glued together.
MS. Book, p. 4. Below a graceful little sketch of man in bed, and
a young woman sitting on the edge of it in a very elementary stage of
dressing. FY's reproduction of this drawing (vol. iii, without pagination)
conveys the idea that it is found on the same page as ' Daphne,' which is
not the case. EY (i. 208) print as a quatrain : —
- 'When a man marries a wife.
- He finds out whether
- Her elbows and knees are only
- Glued together.'
- 'When a man marries a wife.
The lines are certainly so divided in the MS., but the absence of initials in
the second and fourth, as well as the indentation, prove that Blake meant
them to form a couplet. In altering ' has Married ' to ' marries,' and calling
the piece ' droll and risqué', EY miss the point of the allusion to ' knees and
elbows,' which the colloquial ' elbow-grease ' might have suggested.
