Christina Rossetti was one of the most important poets of the Victorian age. She wrote several important pieces of poetry, many of which were published in Goblin Market and other Poems. Interest in Rossetti’s poetry has only increased in the decades since her death. Read more about Christina Rossetti.
‘Goblin Market’ is one of Christina Rossetti’s most famous and well-studied poems. The symbolism in the poem has led to a number of interpretations. One could argue that it is a metaphor for drug addiction or female purity.
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
‘A Bird Song’ by Christina Rossetti describes, through the interactions of swallows, the need a speaker has for a consistent companion.
It's a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
‘A Dirge’ by Christina Rossetti is a thoughtful and moving poem about death. It speaks on the birth and death of an important person in the speaker’s life.
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
Woman was made for man's delight,--
Charm, O woman! Be not afraid!
His shadow by day, his moon by night,
Woman was made.
‘A Hope Carol’ describes a liminal space in which a speaker is existing and the elements which inspire her to hope for the future.
Below the stars, beyond the moon,
Between the night and day,
I heard a rising falling tune
Calling me:
‘After Death’ is a Petrarchan Sonnet by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. It skillfully explores themes of death and tragic love.
The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
‘An Apple Gathering’ is a first-person account of a woman who had a relationship before marriage and suffered the societal consquences.
I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
As froth on the face of the deep,
As foam on the crest of the sea,
As dreams at the waking of sleep,
‘At Home’ describes the plight of a ghost who is kept separate from happiness, friends, and her no longer possible future.
I passed from the familiar room,
I who from love had passed away,
Like the remembrance of a guest
That tarrieth but a day.
‘Conference Between Christ, The Saints, And The Soul’ by Christina Rossetti discusses faith, the afterlife, and how one gets into Heaven.
I am pale with sick desire,
For my heart is far away
From this world's fitful fire
And this world's waning day;
‘Cousin Kate’ speaks to the circumstance of women during the Victorian era. The period in which Rossetti wrote this poem makes the message all the more meaningful.
I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air,
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
‘De Profundis’ by Christina Rossetti describes a speaker’s longing for heaven, and the impossibility of reaching it during one’s lifetime.
Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
It's a weary life, it is, she said:
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish and I wish I were a man:
Or, better then any being, were not:
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Sleep, little Baby, sleep;
The holy Angels love thee,
And guard thy bed, and keep
A blessed watch above thee.
‘I wish I could remember that first day’ by Christina Rossetti is also known as ‘First Day.’ It focuses on the speaker’s regret that she can’t remember more about her first love.
I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say;
‘In an Artist’s Studio’ describes one artist’s obsession over a particular woman and the way that her face has absorbs his every thought.
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ describes the birth of the Christ child on a “bleak midwinter” day and those who came to see him.
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
A hundred, a thousand to one; even so;
Not a hope in the world remained:
The swarming, howling wretches below
Gained and gained and gained.
“Jessie, Jessie Cameron,
Hear me but this once,” quoth he.
“Good luck go with you, neighbor's son,
But I'm no mate for you,” quoth she.
In ‘Let Me Go,’ readers will find a soothing and peaceful depiction of death from the perspective of someone about to face it.
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free?
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.
Out of the church she followed them
With a lofty step and mien:
His bride was like a village maid,
Maude Clare was like a queen.
‘May’ by Christina Rossetti describes an unknown, now finished, event a speaker experienced in the warm, young and pleasant month of May.
I nursed it in my bosom while it lived,
I hid it in my heart when it was dead;
In joy I sat alone, even so I grieved
Alone and nothing said.
I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?
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