Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 - December 29, 1894) was an English poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori.

Born in London and educated privately, she suffered ill-health in her youth, but was already writing poetry in her teens. Her engagement to a painter, James Collinson, was broken off because of religious differences (she was High Church Anglican). This experience is credited with inspiring her most popular poem 'Remember'. Some believe she also rejected a somewhat less than reputable proposition from John Ruskin. ("Here's friendship for you if you like; but love, --/No, thank you, John.")

She produced her first published verse under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne. Many of her poems were aimed at children.

Christina rejected the social world of her brother's "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood", preferring "my shady crevice -- which crevice enjoys the unique advantage of being to my certain knowledge the place assigned me."

The poems are by default sorted according to volume, but you can also choose to sort them alphabetically or by page views.

First Line	Comments
1
A fool I was to sleep at noon,	2 Comments
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,	1 Comment
Before the winter morn,
Come to me in the silence of the night;	2 Comments
DOES the road wind uphill all the way?	4 Comments
From 'The Prince's Progress'
Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
God strengthen me to bear myself;
Gone were but the Winter,
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I
I cannot tell you how it was,
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
I never said I loved you, John:
I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree	2 Comments
I sat beneath a willow tree,
I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
I took my heart in my hand	3 Comments
I was a cottage maiden	9 Comments
I wish I could remember the first day,	2 Comments
It is a land with neither night nor day,	2 Comments
It's a weary life, it is, she said:
MARVEL of marvels, if I myself shall behold
MORNING and evening
My heart is like a singing bird	7 Comments
O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Oh why is heaven built so far,
One face looks out from all his canvasses,	7 Comments
Out of the church she followed them
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Promise me no promises,	2 Comments
Remember me when I am gone away,	10 Comments
SAFE where I cannot die yet,
She sat and sang alway	1 Comment
She stands as pale as Parian statues stand;
Sleep, little Baby, sleep,
Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Something this foggy day, a something which
Ten years ago it seemed impossible	1 Comment
THE FLESH
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,	2 Comments
THE irresponsive silence of the land,
The splendour of the kindling day,
There's blood between us, love, my love,
They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves,
VI
What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,	1 Comment
When I am dead, my dearest,	10 Comments
When I was dead, my spirit turned	1 Comment
Where sunless rivers weep
Who has seen the wind?	6 Comments
Why does the sea moan evermore?
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -	5 Comments
"Too late for love, too late for joy,