An analysis of ‘Sudden Light’, a poem by Pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti
‘Sudden Light’ was written by Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) in the early 1850s, and published in the 1863 volume Poems: An Offering to Lancashire. (It’s the only time poems have been offered to Lancashire in this way, at least that we can recall.) However, the poem as it is usually reprinted is a slightly later version, with a different final stanza. The poem cited below is the later version of ‘Sudden Light’, which appeared in the 1881 volume Poems: A New Edition. What follows, then, is the poem, followed by our analysis of its meaning and language.
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.