‘The Summer Snow’, by Edward Burne-Jones

[Victorian Web Home — Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Edward Burne-Jones —> Next]

The Summer Snow

Edward Burne-Jones

Wood-engraving, engraved by the Dalziels

5¾ x 4¼ inches

Good Words (1863): facing 381.

Burne-Jones’s image recalls the idealized types created by Dante Rossetti. The drawing is flawed with technical faults (the perspective of the wall is incorrect) and the modelling uncertain. Nevertheless, the illustration has a poetic charge of feeling, echoing the first part of the poem which it accompanies, in which flowers comment on falling blossom (for this and the rest of the commentary, see below).

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Burne-Jones was at the very beginning of his career, and in the index the work is incorrectly ascribed to ‘Christopher Jones’. The poem itself is anonymous, and starts like this:

Summer Snow

ONCE in a garden fair,

Huddling close their heads together,
Flowers were heard to whisper there,

"Oh the changeful April weather!
Far hence we saw them fly

Sullen frost and angry blast;
Not a cloud is on the sky,

Yet the snow is falling fast!
Soft falls the summer snow,

On the springing grass drops light,
Not like that which long ago,

Fell so deadly cold and white;
This wears the Rose’s flush,

Faint, ere bloom hath quite foregone her,
Soft as maiden’s timid blush,

With the looks she loves upon her.”