Dante Gabriel Rossetti Analysis

Wilson 1

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born on May 12th, 1828 in London England. Rossetti died of blood poisoning on April 9th, 1882 (Authors). Rossetti studied at various academy's and schools. Dante was also a painter and an Italian translator as well as a poet. Rossetti was of British Nationality with Italian roots. “After the death of his wife he became a reclusive drug addict” (Authors).

The time period Rossetti lived in was still in the age of industrialization until the 1840s. Industrialization brought a huge wave of new manufacturing processes to the world. During Industrialization so much emphasis was placed on intellect and materialism. Romanticism, in a way, was a sort of reaction to these characteristics of industrialization. Rossetti's

Rossetti has lost his hope. The only hope he has left in hope of happiness in death. Rossetti establishes this tone by using the likeness and characteristic of autumn to describe his own life. Rossetti uses autumn to describe how his soul feels drained, and ready to be harvested, much like autumn crops. Rossetti feels used and empty currently. “How the soul feels like a dried sheaf/ Bound up at length for a harvesting” (12-13). Rossetti alludes to the falling autumn leaves covering the past life that he once loved, as the world fades away he begins to forget the events of the past. All the thoughts racing in his mind are in vain. The mood of the poem is depressed. The poem puts the reader in a depressed state of mind because of the themes of suffering, grief, and death. Rossetti’s “Autumn Song” gives off this mood through its inner meaning. A line which describes the insignificance of grief and regret helps to get across the mood of depression. “And how the swift beat of the brain/ Falters because it is in vain” (6-7). All the past events have left Rossetti with grief, regret, and sadness, but these ever-present thoughts on his mind are pointless. His sadness cannot change what has been done. Rossetti uses refrains through the poem to ask the reader to understand his current state of mind. Rossetti writes, “Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf/ In autumn at the fall of leaf?” (1,5). Rosetti asks the reader to contemplate sadness and

Rossetti refers to his own insomnia in this poem in the first stanza. Rossetti states, “and how sleep seems a goodly thing” (4). The grief he is experiencing as the Autumn months’ approach is due to the suicide of Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth Siddal. Rossetti expresses in this poem that his feelings for her, regret, sadness, shame, are all in vain. Rossetti was stricken with grief after her death due to laudanum overdose. After her death Rossetti turned to drugs and alcohol, which is why he feels drained and dried up, wanting the joy that death may bring him so that he will not suffer