Christina Rossetti.
A Birthday.
My heart is like a signing bird
Whose nest is in a watered 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 is come to me.
Raise me a dias of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purpledyes;
Carve it with 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.
Dream Love.
Young Love lies sleeping
In Maytime of the year,
Among the lilies,
Lapped in the tender light:
While lambs come grazing,
White doves come buildoing there:
And round about him
The May-bushes are white.
Soft moss the pillow
For oh, a soft cheek;
Broad leaves cast shadow
Upon the heavy eyes:
There winds and waters
Grow lulled and scarcely speek;
There twylight lingers
The longest in the sky.
Young Love lies dreaming;
But who shall tell the dream?
A perfect sunlight
On rustling forest tips;
Or perfect moonlight
Upon a rippling stream;
Or perfect silence,
Or song of cherished lips.
Burn oders round him
To fill the drowsy air;
Weave silent dances
Around him to and fro;
For oh, in waking
The sights are not so fair,
And song and silence
Are not like these below.
Young Love lies dreaming,
Till summer days are gone-
Dreaming and drowsing
Away to perfect sleep:
He sees the beauty
Sun hath not looked upon,
And tastes the fountain
Unutterably deep.
Him perfect music
Doth hush unto his rest,
And though he pauses
The perfect silence calms:
Oh, poor the voices
Of earth from east to west,
And poor earth's stillness
Between his stately palms!
Young Love lies drowsing
Away to poppied death;
Cool shadows deepen
Across the sleeping face:
So fails the summer
With warm delicious breath
And what hath autumn
To give us in its place?
Draw close the curtain
Of branched evergreen;
Change cannot touch them
With fading fingers sere;
Here the first violets
Perhaps will bud unseen,
And a dove, maybe,
Return to nestle here.
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 bach in tears;
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bittersweet,
Whos wakening should have been in paridise,
Where souls brimfyl of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
Thats, opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though 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.
An End.
Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A Green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Wereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summers day
He left us; he would not say
For autumn twylight cold and grey.
Sit we y his grave, and sing
He is gone away.
To few cords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.
Untitled.
What is the beginning? Love.
What the course. Love still.
What the goal. The goal is Love.
On a happy hill
Is there nothing then but Love?
Search we sky or earth
There is nothing out of Love
Hath perpetual worth;
All things flag but only Love,
All things fail and flee;
There is nothing left but Love
Worthy you and me.
The First Day
I wish I could remeber 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 forsee,
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 I
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!
Sonnet.
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 that 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!
