Inscription surrounded by floral border: Birch: PD.8-1980.f.51

Materials used in production

Watercolour
Graphite

Components of the work

Support composed of paper
Leaf Height 326 mm Width 255 mm

Techniques used in production

Watercolour : Watercolour over graphite on paper

Inscription or legends present

• Text: 99
• Location: Recto, upper right
• Method of creation: Watercolour

• Text: Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, / Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever; / Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, / The soul once of some tremulous inland river, / Quivering to tell her woe, but ah! dumb, dumb / for ever! / While all the forest witched with slumberous / Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness, / Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, / I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands / And track thee, wakeful still, amid the wide-hung silence. / On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, / Thy foliage, like the tresses of the Dryad / Dripping around thy slim white stem, whose shadow / Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, / Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Naiad. / Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; / Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; / Reuben here writes the happy name of Patience, / And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping / Above her, as she steals thy mystery from thy keeping.
• Location: Recto
• Method of creation: Watercolour

• Text: Thou art to me like my belovèd maiden, / So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; / Thy shadow scarce seems shad, thy pattering leaflets / Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, / And Nature gives me all her confidences. / Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, / Thou sympathisest still; wild and unquiet, / I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river , / Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it / My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. / Lowell. / The forward violet thus did I chide: / Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, / If not from my love's breath? The purple pride / Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells / In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. / Shakespeare. / From the meadow your walks have left so sweet / That whenever a March wind sighs / He sets the jewel-print of your feet / In violets blue as your eyes. / A. Tennyson.
• Location: Verso
• Method of creation: Watercolour

Identification numbers

Accession number: PD.8-1980.f.51
Primary reference Number: 44193
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Saturday 6 August 2011 Updated: Monday 3 August 2020 Last processed: Tuesday 13 June 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Paintings, Drawings and Prints