20 Poems by Christina Rossetti, Victorian Romantic Poet
By Nava Atlas | On April 5, 2019 | Updated May 22, 2024 | Comments (13)
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) is one of the most enduring and beloved of Victorian romantic poets. Following is a selection of poems by Christina Rossetti from her vast body of work.
Born in London, Christina was youngest of four artistic and literary siblings, the best known of whom is the pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Her long poem “Goblin Market“ is perhaps her most famous work. She was praised by her contemporaries, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and was considered by some as the natural successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Christina Rossetti’s poetry reflected her devotion, passion, pensiveness, and occasionally, playfulness. Learn more about her in 10 Fascinating Facts About Christina Rossetti, Victorian Poet.
Earthly love and divine inspiration
Symbolism and lyricism used in her work expressed earthly love and divine inspiration. Her poetry touched on themes of nature, death, and sexuality.
Being deeply religious, she took much inspiration from the Bible and the lives of the saints. Rossetti began writing poetry at a young age; by sixteen she had written more than fifty poems.
- Make sure to see: The Poetry of Christina Rossetti: A 19th-Century Analysis.
- Links to analyses of individual poems are provided where available.
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See more analyses of Christina Rossetti’s body of poetic work
on Poem Analysis and Poetry Foundation
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The poems following include:
- Echo
- Remember
- Fata Morgana
- Fluttered Wings
- Dream Land
- Eve
- A Daughter of Eve
- A Birthday
- A Bruised Reed He Shall Not Break
- A Chilly Night
- A Chill
- When I Am Dead, My Dearest
- Good Friday
- Who Shall Deliver Me?
- Vanity of Vanities
- Gone for Ever
- In an Artist’s Studio
- Sappho
- An October Garden
- Passing and Glassing
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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, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening 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 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.
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See also: Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
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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.
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Fata Morgana
A blue-eyed phantom far before
Is laughing, leaping toward the sun:
Like lead I chase it evermore,
I pant and run.
It breaks the sunlight bound on bound:
Goes singing as it leaps along
To sheep-bells with a dreamy sound
A dreamy song.
I laugh, it is so brisk and gay;
It is so far before, I weep:
I hope I shall lie down some day,
Lie down and sleep.
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Fluttered Wings
The splendour of the kindling day,
The splendor of the setting sun,
These move my soul to wend its way,
And have done
With all we grasp and toil amongst and say.
The paling roses of a cloud,
The fading bow that arches space,
These woo my fancy toward my shroud,
Toward the place
Of faces veil’d, and heads discrown’d and bow’d.
The nation of the awful stars,
The wandering star whose blaze is brief,
These make me beat against the bars
Of my grief;
My tedious grief, twin to the life it mars.
O fretted heart toss’d to and fro,
So fain to flee, so fain to rest!
All glories that are high or low,
East or west,
Grow dim to thee who art so fain to go.
(analysis of “Fluttered Wings)
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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.
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Eve
‘While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.
‘How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.
‘Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.
‘I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another
Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover—;
O wanton eyes, run over;
Who but I should grieve?—
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!’
Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice
Forgot his joys
And set aside his feast.
The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;
The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;
The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;
The mocking-bird left off to mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;
The kind hart’s tears were falling;
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation
Answering grief by grief.
Only the serpent in the dust
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin and thrust
His tongue out with its fork.
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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.
(Analysis of “A Daughter of Eve”)
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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 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 fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
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A Bruised Reed He Shall Not Break
I will accept thy will to do and be,
Thy hatred and intolerance of sin,
Thy will at least to love, that burns within
And thirsteth after Me:
So will I render fruitful, blessing still,
The germs and small beginnings in thy heart,
Because thy will cleaves to the better part.—
Alas, I cannot will.
Dost not thou will, poor soul? Yet I receive
The inner unseen longings of the soul,
I guide them turning towards Me; I control
And charm hearts till they grieve:
If thou desire, it yet shall come to pass,
Though thou but wish indeed to choose My love;
For I have power in earth and heaven above.—
I cannot wish, alas!
What, neither choose nor wish to choose? and yet
I still must strive to win thee and constrain:
For thee I hung upon the cross in pain,
How then can I forget?
If thou as yet dost neither love, nor hate,
Nor choose, nor wish,—resign thyself, be still
Till I infuse love, hatred, longing, will.—
I do not deprecate.
(Analysis of “A Bruised Heel He Shall Not Break”)
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A Chilly Night
I rose at the dead of night
And went to the lattice alone
To look for my Mother’s ghost
Where the ghostly moonlight shone.
My friends had failed one by one,
Middle aged, young, and old,
Till the ghosts were warmer to me
Than my friends that had grown cold.
I looked and I saw the ghosts
Dotting plain and mound:
They stood in the blank moonlight
But no shadow lay on the ground;
They spoke without a voice
And they leapt without a sound.
I called: ‘O my Mother dear,’ —
I sobbed: ‘O my Mother kind,
Make a lonely bed for me
And shelter it from the wind:
‘Tell the others not to come
To see me night or day;
But I need not tell my friends
To be sure to keep away.’
My Mother raised her eyes,
They were blank and could not see;
Yet they held me with their stare
While they seemed to look at me.
She opened her mouth and spoke,
I could not hear a word
While my flesh crept on my bones
And every hair was stirred.
She knew that I could not hear
The message that she told
Whether I had long to wait
Or soon should sleep in the mould:
I saw her toss her shadowless hair
And wring her hands in the cold.
I strained to catch her words
And she strained to make me hear,
But never a sound of words
Fell on my straining ear.
From midnight to the cockcrow
I kept my watch in pain
While the subtle ghosts grew subtler
In the sad night on the wane.
From midnight to the cockcrow
I watched till all were gone,
Some to sleep in the shifting sea
And some under turf and stone:
Living had failed and dead had failed
And I was indeed alone.
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A Chill
What can lambkins do
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother
The careful ewe.
What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother’s wing
Till day breaks anew.
If in a field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm soft sleeping-place
Found for me!
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When I Am Dead, My Dearest
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.
(Analysis of “When I am Dead, My Dearest”)
Good Friday
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 the 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.
Who Shall Deliver Me?
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?
If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run! Death runs apace.
If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!
God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys:
Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.
Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free.
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Vanity of Vanities
Ah woe is me for pleasure that is vain,
Ah woe is me for glory that is past:
Pleasure that bringeth sorrow at the last,
Glory that at the last bringeth no gain!
So saith the sinking heart; and so again
It shall say till the mighty angel-blast
Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast,
And showering down the stars like sudden rain.
And evermore men shall go fearfully
Bending beneath their weight of heaviness;
And ancient men shall lie down wearily,
And strong men shall rise up in weariness;
Yea, even the young shall answer sighingly,
Saying one to another: How vain it is!
(1893)
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Gone for Ever
O happy rose-bud blooming
Upon thy parent tree,
Nay, thou art too presuming;
For soon the earth entombing
Thy faded charms shall be,
And the chill damp consuming.
O happy skylark springing
Up to the broad blue sky,
Too fearless in thy winging,
Too gladsome in thy singing,
Thou also soon shalt lie
Where no sweet notes are ringing.
And through life’s shine and shower
We shall have joy and pain;
But in the summer bower,
And at the morning hour,
We still shall look in vain
For the dame bird and flower.
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In an Artist’s Studio
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel – every canvas 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 joyful 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.
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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 better far to die
Than thus for ever 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 pain and care and sorrow
Thro’ the long night that knows no morrow;
Living unloved, to die unknown,
Unwept, untended and alone.
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An October Garden
In my autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses:
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To autumn’s languid sun and rain,
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.
Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is tho’ least and last of all,
A rose to me tho’ at the fall.
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Passing and Glassing
All things that pass
Are woman’s looking-glass;
They show her how her bloom must fade,
And she herself be laid
With withered roses in the shade;
With withered roses and the fallen peach,
Unlovely, out of reach
Of summer joy that was.
All things that pass
Are woman’s tiring-glass;
The faded lavender is sweet,
Sweet the dead violet,
Culled and laid by and cared for yet;
The dried-up violets and dried lavender
Still sweet, may comfort her,
Nor need she cry, Alas!
All things that pass
Are wisdom’s looking-glass;
Being full of hope and fear, and still
Brimful of good or ill,
According to our work and will;
For there is nothing new beneath the sun,
Our doings have been done,
And that which shall be was.
(1881)
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Poetry collections by Christina Rossetti
Rossetti wrote prolifically throughout her life, experimenting with various forms such as hymns, sonnets, and ballads. Some of the published collections of her work include:
- Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
- The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866)
- Speaking Likenesses (1874)
- A Pageant and Other Poems (1881)
- New Poems (1896)
Thank you for creating this website. Far too often, women are obscured & overshadowed by males in whatever endeavor they engage. Here, women poets are celebrated. I have loved Christina Rossetti since I was introduced to her works in high school. Thank you for providing a location to read some of her best loved poems. You have a wonderful site here.
Thank you for your kind thoughts, Christine … and I agreee, Christina Rossetti is a wonderful poet.
My aunt gave me her huge copy of these poems at my age of eight years old-the book was lost later,I never forgot that I had loved it-so at my age now of seventy eight years found my way to the local library and in the very old section they had a copy I could borrow-it is still as wonderful-entrancing,touches my heart,I love your site-thankyou.
A poem “Let Me Go” is mentioned in a book I’m reading but it’s not listed here. The book is Homecoming by Kate Morton on page 399.
Maxine, this is but a small sampling of Christina Rossetti’s body of poetry; that being said, “Let Me Go” is very likely misattributed to her. There are no sources to verify that she’s the author of this poem, which is often described as a “funeral poem.” I’m not sure if you’re referring to this poem: https://atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/tag/who-wrote-the-poem-miss-me-but-let-me-go/ — which honestly, doesn’t sound like her voice at all.
The sentiment expressed in the second poem in our post, “Remember,” is similar and perhaps that’s how the anonymous poem eventually became attributed to Rossetti. I hope that explains things!
I am reading a novel by my favourite author Hugh Walpole called the Inquisitor. Written in 1935. He writes a poem in the book starting, Love is the key of life and death, of hidden heavenly mystery…. He attributes it to Christina Rossetti. The book is fiction so perhaps thought the poem would be also. Google proves me wrong. Thank you Hugh for bringing to my attention this talented poet of days gone by. Sheer class.
OMG…….Powerful poems indeed. Christina Rosetti has painted life and death artistically. Thanks for creating this site.
As a child, our family lived next to a big old but stately and beautiful cemetery. My dad and I would take the dog for a walk along the well manicured pathways, looking at the gravestones as we went. One day, he stopped at the grave of a lady who had passed away in 1905. The headstone had the Christina Rossetti poem, “When I Am Dead, My Dearest.” My dad, who was highly educated in the Classics and Literature, knew that poem from college. He read it to me. He said to remember him by that poem when he was gone. He’s been gone for 28 years. When I saw your website, I knew I had to read it again. It brought tears to my eyes. Christina Rossetti’s poems are so timeless. Thank you for setting up this website to remember her. I’ll come back again and again.
Gabrielle, thank you for taking the time to write this lovely comment! Of course it’s bittersweet to remember a loved one who has been gone, but Christina Rossetti’s poem seems to have stirred a wonderful memory for you.
Read this page on break at work at my desk, could not stop the tears! If a woman has ever truly been in love these poems are for you!
Will return to the site many more times. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your kind comment, Rosemarie! It’s lovely that you were so moved by Rossetti’s poetry.
Had not read or known of Christina Rossetti until watching Wagon Train, The Vincent Eaglewood story. I looked up her work and found your website, Thank you.
That’s interesting, Sheilah — and in turn, I had never heard of The Vincent Eaglewood story! I’ll have to learn more about it.