SOURCE: "Political Themes in the Work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti," in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 17, No. 3, Autumn, 1979, pp. 159-79.

In the following essay, Bentley studies the theme of modern indifference to God in Rossetti's political poetry.

Max Beerbohm's well-known caricature of the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti "precociously manifesting … that queer indifference to politics which marked him in his prime and in his decline"¹ embodies a basic untruth. For despite Beerbohm's and, indeed, Rossetti's own assertions to the contrary,² Rossetti was far from indifferent to politics, either in his youth, in his "prime," or in his "decline." From almost the beginning to almost the end of his poetic and artistic career he manifested a sporadic but nevertheless keen and satirical interest in contemporary English and European affairs. In the following pages I will examine a number of poems by Rossetti which either deal directly with political subjects or contain references...