Selected Poems

by Rossetti, Christina (Author); Roe, Dinah (Editor); Roe, Dinah (Introduction by)

• ISBN13: 9780140424690
• ISBN10: 0140424695
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-24
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

A captivating selection of enduring verse by one of the Victorian era’s most beloved poets Christina Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse forms. Weaving connections between love and death, triumph and loss, heavenly joys and earthly pleasures, Rossetti’s poems startle the imagination with their extraordinary truth, beauty, and intensity. This first fully annotated collection, based on the definitive texts, brings together love lyrics, sonnets, hymns, ballads, the vast body of her devotional poetry, and fantasy poems like Goblin Market,” Rossetti’s terrifyingly vivid verses for children.

Author Biography

Christina Rossetti (1830-û1894) was an English poet whose work is imbued with religious themes and an undercurrent of eroticism and feminist idealism. At the height of her popularity in the late nineteenth century, she was considered on par with fellow Victorian poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Dinah Roe is an independent scholar whose interests include the nineteenth-century novel, Victorian poetry, and women-'s writing.

Table of Contents

On Albina	p. 3
Forget Me Not	p. 3
Charade	p. 3
Hope in Grief	p. 4
On the Death of a Cat	p. 5
Sappho	p. 6
Heart's Chill Between	p. 6
Death's Chill Between	p. 8
Lines / given with a Penwiper	p. 9
A Pause of Thought	p. 10
Song ['She sat and sang always']	p. 10
Song ['When I am dead, my dearest']	p. 11
Some ladies dress in muslin full and white	p. 12
On Keats	p. 12
Song ['Oh roses for the flush of youth']	p. 13
Have you forgotten?	p. 13
Sweet Death	p. 14
An End	p. 14
Dream-Land	p. 15
Remember	p. 16
Three Nuns	p. 17
Portraits	p. 24
'Consider the Lilies of the Field' ['Flowers preach to us if we will hear']	p. 24
The P.R.B.	p. 25
The Bourne	p. 26
The World	p. 26
From the Antique	p. 27
Three Stages	p. 27
Echo	p. 30
My Dream	p. 31
May	p. 33
Shut Out	p. 33
Amen	p. 34
The Hour and the Ghost	p. 35
The Lowest Room	p. 37
A Triad	p. 47
Love from the North	p. 48
In an Artist's Studio	p. 49
A Better Resurrection	p. 49
'Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive'	p. 50
'The heart knoweth its own bitterness' ['When all the over-work of life']	p. 51
A Birthday	p. 52
An Apple-Gathering	p. 53
Winter: My Secret	p. 54
Maude Clare	p. 55
At Home	p. 57
Up-Hill	p. 58
The Convent Threshold	p. 59
'What good shall my life do me?' ['Have dead men long to wait?']	p. 63
Winter Rain	p. 64
L.E.L.	p. 65
Goblin Market	p. 67
'No, Thank You, John'	p. 83
'Out of the Deep'	p. 84
The Queen of Hearts	p. 85
Consider	p. 86
The Lowest Place	p. 87
Beauty is Vain	p. 87
What Would I Give?	p. 88
Who Shall Deliver Me?	p. 88
Twice	p. 89
Jessie Cameron	p. 91
The Prince's Progress	p. 94
Memory	p. 112
Amor Mundi	p. 114
'The Iniquity of the Fathers Upon the Children'	p. 115
A Daughter of Eve	p. 131
A Smile and a Sigh	p. 131
Autumn Violets	p. 132
'They Desire a Better Country'	p. 132
A Christmas Carol	p. 134
Love me, - I love you	p. 135
A city plum is not a plum	p. 135
A baby's cradle with no baby in it	p. 135
Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth	p. 136
A linnet in a gilded cage	p. 136
If all were rain and never sun	p. 136
If I were a Queen	p. 136
What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow	p. 137
Brown and furry	p. 137
A toadstool comes up in a night	p. 137
If a pig wore a wig	p. 137
How many seconds in a minute?	p. 138
What is pink? a rose is pink	p. 138
A pin has a head, but has no hair	p. 139
When fishes set umbrellas up	p. 139
The peacock has a score of eyes	p. 139
The wind has such a rainy sound	p. 140
Who has seen the wind?	p. 140
When a mounting skylark sings	p. 140
An emerald is as green as grass	p. 141
What does the bee do?	p. 141
I caught a little ladybird	p. 141
Baby lies so fast asleep	p. 142
Confluents	p. 142
'Yet a little while'	p. 143
Manna Innominata	p. 143
Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome	p. 152
The Key-Note	p. 152
He and She	p. 153
De Profundis	p. 153
'Hollow-Sounding and Mysterious'	p. 154
At Last	p. 155
Mariana	p. 155
Passing and Glassing	p. 156
The Thread of Life	p. 157
Touching 'Never'	p. 158
An Old-World Thicket	p. 159
Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets	p. 165
'Judge nothing before the time'	p. 177
Joy is but sorrow	p. 178
'Redeeming the Time'	p. 178
'Doeth well ... doeth better'	p. 178
A Castle-Builder's World	p. 179
Piteous my rhyme is	p. 179
If love is not worth loving, then life is not worth living	p. 180
Roses on a brier	p. 180
'Called to be Saints'	p. 181
Of each sad word which is more sorrowful	p. 181
Our heaven must be within ourselves	p. 183
'A Helpmeet for Him'	p. 183
O ye who love today	p. 183
Lord, I am feeble and of mean account	p. 183
What is the beginning? Love. What the course? Love still	p. 183
As froth on the face of the deep	p. 184
Patience must dwell with Love, for Love and Sorrow	p. 184
Hope is the counterpoise of fear	p. 184
'Subject to like Passions as we are'	p. 185
Experience bows a sweet contented face	p. 185
'Charity never Faileth'	p. 186
Safe where I cannot lie yet	p. 186
How great is little man!	p. 186
'The Greatest of these is Charity'	p. 187
'O Lucifer, Son of the Morning!'	p. 188
Time seems not short	p. 188
'Judge not according to the appearance'	p. 189
St Peter	p. 189
'Sit down in the lowest room'	p. 190
'Consider the Lilies of the Field' ['Solomon most glorious in array']	p. 190
Our Mothers, lovely women pitiful	p. 190
Babylon the Great	p. 191
'Do this, and he doeth it'	p. 191
'Standing afar off for the fear of her torment'	p. 192
Vigil of St Bartholomew	p. 192
'Who hath despised the day of small things?'	p. 193
Tune me, O Lord, into one harmony	p. 193
Notes	p. 195
Index of Titles	p. 253
Index of First Lines	p. 258
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.