Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech, Gave her a sick recoil; As, dip thy fingers through the green That masks a pool, where they have been, The 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.
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.