Maura Ives: How an American magazine helped launch one of Britain’s favorite Christmas carols
Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ didn’t begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.
Christina Rossetti: A Dirge
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
Dante Alighieri: Sestina of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni
Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the hills
Before Love’s flame in this damp wood and green
Burn, as it burns within a youthful lady,
For my sake, who would sleep away in stone
My life, or feed like beasts upon the grass,
Only to see her garments cast a shade.
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.
Christina Rossetti: One Sea-Side Grave
Unmindful of the roses,
Unmindful of the thorn
Christina Rossetti: The Plague
‘Listen, the last stroke of death’s noon has struck—
The plague is come,’ a gnashing Madman said…
Michael Simms: Re-reading Christina Rossetti’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’
The value of Rossetti’s poem lies in both the expert use of the Petrarchan sonnet, a particularly challenging form to master in English, and in the poet’s complex stance on the role of art in creating and re-enforcing images of women.
Christina Rossetti: In the bleak midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
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. … Continue reading
Christina Rossetti: February 14. 1883
A world of change & loss, a world of death, Of heart & eyes that fail, of labouring breath, Of pains to bear & painful deeds to do:— Nevertheless a … Continue reading
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. … Continue reading
Christina Rossetti: “I wish I could remember that first day”
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 … Continue reading
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