Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894), was an English poet and younger sister of poet-artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. Her best-known collection of verse is Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862). Other works include The Prince’s Progress (1866), Sing-Song: a Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), and A Pageant and Other Poems (1881).
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Monna Innominata
[I wish I could remember]
I wish I could remember the 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.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand!—Did one but know!
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A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais 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 fleur-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
The handwritten copy of the short poem Christina Rossetti gave to her mother on Valentine’s Day 1884 is from “Eleven Valentines of Christina Rossetti,” originally published/produced in England [London], 1884. Source: Mercer University.