Song

WHEN I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me:

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain;

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

Christina Rossetti

Remember

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

De Profundis

OH why is heaven built so far,

Oh why is earth set so remote?

I cannot reach the nearest star

That hangs afloat.

I would not care to reach the moon,

One round monotonous of change;

Yet even she repeats her tune

Beyond my range.

I never watch the scatter'd fire

Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,

But all my heart is one desire,

And all in vain:

For I am bound with fleshly bands,

Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;

I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,

And catch at hope.

Christina Rossetti

Dream Land

WHERE sunless rivers weep

Their waves into the deep,

She sleeps a charmed sleep:

Awake her not.

Led by a single star,

She came from very far

To seek where shadows are

Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,

She left the fields of corn,

For twilight cold and lorn

And water springs.

Through sleep, as through a veil,

She sees the sky look pale,

And hears the nightingale

That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest

Shed over brow and breast;

Her face is toward the west,

The purple land.

She cannot see the grain

Ripening on hill and plain;

She cannot feel the rain

Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore

Upon a mossy shore;

Rest, rest at the heart's core

Till time shall cease:

Sleep that no pain shall wake;

Night that no morn shall break

Till joy shall overtake

Her perfect peace.

Christina Rossetti

Up-Hill

DOES the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

Christina Rossetti

A Daughter of Eve

A FOOL I was to sleep at noon,

And wake when night is chilly

Beneath the comfortless cold moon;

A fool to pluck my rose too soon,

A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;

Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept:

Oh it was summer when I slept,

It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring

And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:

Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,

No more to laugh, no more to sing,

I sit alone with sorrow.

Christina Rossetti

May

I cannot tell you how it was,

But this I know: it came to pass

Upon a bright and sunny day

When May was young; ah, pleasant May!

As yet the poppies were not born

Between the blades of tender corn;

The last egg had not hatched as yet,

Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,

But this I know: it did but pass.

It passed away with sunny May,

Like all sweet things it passed away,

And left me old, and cold, and gray.

Christina Rossetti

From Sunset to Star Rise

GO from me, summer friends, and tarry not:

I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,

A silly sheep benighted from the fold,

A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.

Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,

Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;

Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,

Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.

For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,

I live alone, I look to die alone:

Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,

Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,

My heart goes sighing after swallows flown

On sometime summer's unreturning track.

Christina Rossetti

Cousin Kate

I WAS a cottage maiden

Hardened by sun and air

Contented with my cottage mates,

Not mindful I was fair.

Why did a great lord find me out,

And praise my flaxen hair?

Why did a great lord find me out,

To fill my heart with care?

He lured me to his palace home -

Woe's me for joy thereof-

To lead a shameless shameful life,

His plaything and his love.

He wore me like a silken knot,

He changed me like a glove;

So now I moan, an unclean thing,

Who might have been a dove.

O Lady kate, my cousin Kate,

You grew more fair than I:

He saw you at your father's gate,

Chose you, and cast me by.

He watched your steps along the lane,

Your work among the rye;

He lifted you from mean estate

To sit with him on high.

Because you were so good and pure

He bound you with his ring:

The neighbors call you good and pure,

Call me an outcast thing.

Even so I sit and howl in dust,

You sit in gold and sing:

Now which of us has tenderer heart?

You had the stronger wing.

O cousin Kate, my love was true,

Your love was writ in sand:

If he had fooled not me but you,

If you stood where I stand,

He'd not have won me with his love

Nor bought me with his land;

I would have spit into his face

And not have taken his hand.

Yet I've a gift you have not got,

And seem not like to get:

For all your clothes and wedding-ring

I've little doubt you fret.

My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,

Cling closer, closer yet:

Your father would give his lands for one

To wear his coronet.

Christina Rossetti

A Birthday

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 thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love has come to me.

Raise me a dias of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Christina Rossetti

Sappho

I SIGH at day-dawn, and I sigh

When the dull day is passing by.

I sigh at evening, and again

I sigh when night brings sleep to men.

Oh! it were far better to die

Than thus forever mourn and sigh,

And in death's dreamless sleep to be

Unconscious that none weep for me;

Eased from my weight of heaviness,

Forgetful of forgetfulness,

Resting from care and pain and sorrow

Thro' the long night that knows no morrow;

Living unloved, to die unknown,

Unwept, untended, and alone.

Christina Rossetti

A Pause

THEY made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves,

And the bed sweet with flowers on which I lay;

While my soul, love-bound, loitered on its way.

I did not hear the birds about the eaves,

Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves:

Only my soul kept watch from day to day,

My thirsty soul kept watch for one away:--

Perhaps he loves, I thought, remembers, grieves.

At length there came the step upon the stair,

Upon the lock the old familiar hand:

Then first my spirit seemed to scent the air

Of Paradise; then first the tardy sand

Of time ran golden; and I felt my hair

Put on a glory,and my soul expand.

Christina Rossetti

A Study (A Soul)

SHE stands as pale as Parian statues stand;

Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay,

And felt her strength above the Roman sway,

And felt the aspic writhing in her hand.

Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land,

For dim beyond it looms the light of day;

Her feet are steadfast; all the arduous way

That foot-track hath not wavered on the sand.

She stands there like a beacon thro' the night,

A pale clear beacon where the storm-drift is;

She stands alone, a wonder deathly white;

She stands there patient, nerved with inner might,

Indomitable in her feebleness,

Her face and will athirst against the light.

Christina Rossetti

Echo

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;

    Come back in tears,

O memory of hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, to sweet, too bitter sweet,

Whose waking should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

Where thirsting longing eyes

    Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My life again tho' cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

    Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Christina Rossetti

Cobwebs

IT is a land with neither night nor day,

Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain,

Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain

Stretches thro' long unbroken miles away:

While thro' the sluggish air a twilight grey

Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane,

No ebb and flow are there among the main,

No bud-time no leaf-falling there for aye,

No ripple on the sea, no shifting sand,

No beat of wings to stir the stagnant space,

And loveless sea: no trace of days before,

No guarded home, no time-worn restingplace

No future hope no fear forevermore.

Christina Rossetti

In an Artist's Studio

ONE face looks out from all his canvasses,

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;

We found her hidden just behind those screens,

That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

A queenin opal or in ruby dress,

A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,

A saint, an angel;--every canvass means

The same one meaning, neither more nor less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,

And she with true kind eyes looks back on him

Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light;

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Christina Rossetti

Winter: My Secret

I TELL my secret? No indeed, not I:

Perhaps some day, who knows?

But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,

And you're too curious: fie!

You want to hear it? well:

Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:

Suppose there is no secret after all,

But only just my fun.

Today's a nipping day, a biting day;

In which one wants a shawl,

A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:

I cannot ope to everyone who taps,

And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;

Come bounding and surrounding me,

Come buffeting, astounding me,

Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.

I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows

His nose to Russian snows

To be pecked at by every wind that blows?

You would not peck? I thank you for good will,

Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust

March with its peck of dust,

Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,

Nor even May, whose flowers

One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,

WHen drowsy birds sing less and less,

And golden fruit is ripening to excess,

If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,

And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,

Perhaps my secret I may say,

Or you may guess.

Christina Rossetti

Cousin Kate

I WAS a cottage maiden

Hardened by sun and air

Contented with my cottage mates,

Not mindful I was fair.

Why did a great lord find me out,

And praise my flaxen hair?

Why did a great lord find me out,

To fill my heart with care?

He lured me to his palace home -

Woe's me for joy thereof-

To lead a shameless shameful life,

His plaything and his love.

He wore me like a silken knot,

He changed me like a glove;

So now I moan, an unclean thing,

Who might have been a dove.

O Lady kate, my cousin Kate,

You grew more fair than I:

He saw you at your father's gate,

Chose you, and cast me by.

He watched your steps along the lane,

Your work among the rye;

He lifted you from mean estate

To sit with him on high.

Because you were so good and pure

He bound you with his ring:

The neighbors call you good and pure,

Call me an outcast thing.

Even so I sit and howl in dust,

You sit in gold and sing:

Now which of us has tenderer heart?

You had the stronger wing.

O cousin Kate, my love was true,

Your love was writ in sand:

If he had fooled not me but you,

If you stood where I stand,

He'd not have won me with his love

Nor bought me with his land;

I would have spit into his face

And not have taken his hand.

Yet I've a gift you have not got,

And seem not like to get:

For all your clothes and wedding-ring

I've little doubt you fret.

My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,

Cling closer, closer yet:

Your father would give his lands for one

To wear his coronet.

Christina Rossetti

Beneath Thy Cross

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?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon--

I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

Christina Rossetti