Dante Gabriel Rossetti

La Bella Mano

O LOVELY hand, that thy sweet self doth lave
In that thy pure and proper element,

Venus's birth

The 'Lady of Love' is Venus, born from sea foam in classical myth. Rossetti links the hand washing in water to Venus emerging from waves—both pure, both beautiful.

Whence erst the Lady of Love's high advent
Was born, and endless fires sprang from the wave:—
Even as her Loves to her their offerings gave,

Her Loves

Capital-L 'Loves' means the *Erotes*—Cupid and his brothers in mythology, Venus's attendants who bring jeweled gifts to beautiful women.

For thee the jewelled gifts they bear; while each
Looks to those lips, of music-measured speech
The fount, and of more bliss than man may crave.
In royal wise ring-girt and bracelet-spann'd,

Virginity paradox

Venus is the goddess of sexual love, so 'Venus' own virginity' is an oxymoron. Rossetti's praising the hand as both sensual and pure—an impossible combination.

A flower of Venus' own virginity,
Go shine among thy sisterly sweet band;
In maiden-minded converse delicately
Evermore white and soft; until thou be,
O hand! heart-handsel'd in a lover's hand.

Heart-handsel'd

'Handsel' means a first gift or token of luck. The hand will be given as a marriage pledge—this whole poem is elaborate courtship flattery.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Pre-Raphaelite Fetish

This is a sonnet about a woman's hand—not her face, not her character, just her hand. Rossetti wrote it for his lover Jane Morris, wife of his friend William Morris, during their decades-long affair. The Pre-Raphaelites obsessed over body parts: Swinburne wrote about feet, Rossetti painted the same neck and hands repeatedly. This wasn't just Victorian repression—it was aesthetic fragmentation, turning women into collections of beautiful objects.

The poem works through extended mythological comparison. The hand washing itself becomes Venus rising from the sea (lines 2-4). The rings and bracelets become offerings from Cupid and his brothers (lines 5-6). By line 9, we're in full courtly mode: the hand is 'ring-girt and bracelet-spann'd' like royalty. Every detail elevates the hand from flesh to icon.

Notice the impossible purity Rossetti demands. The hand must be 'white and soft' (line 13), engaged in 'maiden-minded converse' (line 12), a 'flower of Venus' own virginity' (line 10)—but Venus is the goddess of sex. He wants Jane both available and untouchable, both sensual (those jewels, those lips) and virginal. The final line resolves this by imagining marriage, but since Jane was already married, even that's a fantasy. The poem is an elaborate compliment to a hand he could look at but not hold.

Sonnet Architecture

This is an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet: eight lines (octave) establishing the mythological comparison, then six lines (sestet) pivoting to the hand's present state and future. The rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA CDCDCD—textbook Petrarch, whom Rossetti translated extensively. He's using the form Petrarch invented for unattainable women (Laura) to praise an unattainable woman (Jane).

The syntax is deliberately archaic: 'thy sweet self doth lave' (line 1), 'whence erst' (line 3), 'in royal wise' (line 9). This isn't how Victorians talked—it's how Rossetti thought medieval Italian poets talked. He's performing antiquity, making the compliment feel timeless and literary rather than creepy and specific. The inversion in line 14—'heart-handsel'd in a lover's hand'—puts maximum emphasis on that final word: *hand*. After fourteen lines of elaborate praise, we end where we began, on the physical object itself.