The photographs:
Idylls and Fancy Subjects
Julia Margaret CAMERON
British, 1815–79
Tell me not Sweet I am Unkind, c. 1868
albumen silver photograph
20.6 x 24.9 cm
The Wilson Centre for Photography
84:0751
Here Cameron sympathetically depicts a scene of tender love and communion
between male and female characters. On the mount of this picture she has
inscribed a verse from Richard Lovelace's (1618-58) poem To Lucasta, Going to
the Wars, that reads in part:
"Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly."
The verse indicates that their intimate moment is to be short-lived as war is
impending.
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