In the notes to each poem, the first date given isthe poem’s composition date, while the second date provided is the date of its first publication in a poetry volume (see the list of editions of Rossetti’s works overleaf). The phrase ‘First poetry volume’, together with a date, is used only if the poem first appeared elsewhere, such as in a journal or magazine. Where no composition date is available, I have given the date of first publication only. For poems which originally appeared in contemporary magazines or in Rossetti’s prose-works, the dates of their first publication in a poetry volume are also provided. ‘Unpublished’, given after a poem’s composition date, indicates that the poem remained unpublished until Crump’s edition (The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, Louisiana State University Press, 1979–90).
Following the precedent set by the Betty S. Flowers Complete Poems, my notes include William Michael Rossetti’s own ‘Notes’ to his sister’s Poetical Works. In response to her introduction’s call for greater attention to Rossetti’s relationship to the Authorized Version of the Bible, I have given special attention to biblical allusions.
Attention has also been given to the ways in which Rossetti uses both the primary and the secondary meanings of the Victorian popular language of flowers. Sources were The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems (T. Nelson and Sons, 1857) and Henry Phillips, Floral Emblems (Saunders and Otley, 1825).
I have depended heavily on the work of Crump, Flowers and on Jan Marsh’s biography of Rossetti, and cannot recommend their work highly enough to students and admirers of Christina Rossetti.
CR Christina Rossetti
DGR Dante Gabriel Rossetti
MFR Maria Francesca Rossetti
WMR William Michael Rossetti
CR Jan Marsh, Christina Rossetti: A Literary Biography (Jonathan Cape, 1994)
FD The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1892 - SPCK hereafter)
Flowers Betty Flowers, Christina Rossetti: The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2001)
Letters The Letters of Christina Rossetti, ed. Antony H. Harrison, 4 vols. (University Press of Virginia, 1997-2004)
‘Memoir’ WMR’s ‘Memoir’ from The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (Macmillan, 1904), pp. xlv-lxxi
‘Notes’ WMR’s notes on CR’s poems from The Poetical Works, pp. 459-94
TF Time Flies: A Reading Diary (SPCK, 1885)
1847 Verses: Dedicated to her Mother (privately printed by Gaetano Polidori)
1862 Goblin Market and Other Poems (Macmillan)
1866 The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (Macmillan)
1870 Commonplace, and Other Short Stories (F. S. Ellis)
1872 Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (Routledge)
1874 Annus Domini: A Prayer for Each Day of the Year, Founded on a Text of Holy Scripture (James Parker and Co.)
1875 Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems (Macmillan)
1881 A Pageant and Other Poems (Macmillan) 1881 Called to be Saints: The Minor Festivals Devotionally Studied (SPCK)
1885 Time Flies: A Reading Diary (SPCK)
1892 The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (SPCK)
1893 Verses. Reprinted from “Called to be Saints,” “Time Flies,” “The Face of the Deep” (SPCK)
1896 New Poems, Hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected, ed. WMR (Macmillan)
1897 Maude: A Story for Girls (James Bowdon)
1904 The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, with Memoir and Notes by William Michael Rossetti (Macmillan)
Composed June 1844. First published 1896.
4. painted applied make-up.
Composed 19 August 1844. First published 1896.
Composed 3 December 1845. Unpublished. The solution to this poem’s ‘charade’ is ‘a sonnet’.
Composed 3 December 1845. Unpublished.
14. pall a cloth used to drape a coffin, bier or tomb.
19-21. Say not, vain… its toil‘Vanity of vanities, saiththe Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity’ (Ecclesiastes 1:2).
Composed 14 March 1846. First published 1896. According to WMR, ‘This cat belonged to our aunt, Eliza Harriet Polidori’ (‘Notes’ 465). CR was very close to her Aunt Eliza, a formidable woman who won a Turkish medal for her service as a Nightingale Nurse in Scutari during the Crimean War. Eliza, who died at the age of eighty-three, survived all her siblings, including CR’s mother, Frances.
14. Grimalkin a faery cat in Scottish legend, its name (from ‘grey’, the colour, and malkin, an old word for ‘cat’) became associated with witches’ cats in the Middle Ages; it is also the name of the Witches’ cat in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
21. reft broken or torn apart, plundered (from reave, to break or tear apart, take away by force).
Composed 11 September 1846. First published 1847.
Title. Sappho was a seventh-century Greek poet whose work survives only in fragments yet has an ongoing influence on Western poetry. Famous nowadays for her bisexuality, Sappho was most noted in CR’s time for her dramatic suicide: she plunged from a cliff to her death for unrequited love.
5-6. Oh! It were better… mourn and sigh see ll. 55-6 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die/To cease upon the midnight with no pain’.
13-14. Living unloved…untended and alone see ll. 11-12 of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Mariana in the South’ (1833): ‘And “Ah,” she sang, “to be all alone, /To live forgotten, and love forlorn.”’
Composed 22 September 1847. First published in The Athenaeum 1095 (21 October 1848), 1056. First poetry volume 1904. WMR writes that the poem’s original title was ‘The Last Hope’ and that it ‘was the first poem by Christina that got published’. Yet he thought ‘it ought to have been better than it is, and was hardly good enough for re-publication’. WMR ultimately included it in his volume because Mackenzie Bell’s biography of CR had revived interest in the poem (‘Notes’ 467).
8. restive restless.
38. stupified dazed, with senses dulled.
Composed 29 September 1847. First published in The Athenaeum 1094 (14 October 1848), 1032. First poetry volume 1904. WMR writes that this poem’s title ‘was originally Anne of Warwick, and was intended to represent (in a rather “young-ladyish” form) the dolorous emotions and flitting frenzy of Anne, when widowed of her youthful husband, the Prince of Wales’. He further notes that ‘this poem was offered to The Athenaeum at the same time as Heart’s Chill Between; and my brother [DGR] then substituted these titles for the original ones’ (‘Notes’ 467).
Composed 20 November 1847. Unpublished. Jan Marsh notes that this poem is about Rossetti’s father, whose declining health meant that Christina had to care for him at home (CR 78).
3. Brussels web a type of rug.
Composed 14 February 1848. First published in The Germ 2 (February 1850), 57. First poetry volume 1862.
2. hope deferred made my heart sick ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life’ (Proverbs 13:12).
Composed 26 November 1848. First published 1862. See Emily Dickinson’s ‘I died for beauty, but was scarce’ (1862).
Composed 12 December 1848. First published 1862. WMR writes that this poem ‘has been oftener quoted, and certainly oftener set to music, than anything else by Christina Rossetti’ (‘Notes’ 477-8).
3. roses at my head a crown of roses signifies a reward of virtue.
4. cypress emblem of death, mourning, despair.
11. nightingale see John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
Composed between 1848 and 1849. First published 1896. Written during the Rossetti siblings’ bouts-rimes sonnet competitions (see the Introduction). Also included in Maude: A Story for Girls (1897). Both story and poem remained unpublished during CR’s lifetime.
Title. ‘Vanity Fair’ was added by WMR as the title in New Poems (1896).
3. dog-cart a two-wheeled vehicle drawn by one horse; hack a hackney coach for hire.
4. clarence a closed, four-wheeled carriage.
14. Bason (or basin) reservoir. In Maude, a character explains that ‘everyone will understand the Bason to mean the one in St James’s Park’ (p. 23). The basin was built to provide water for St James’s Palace in the eighteenth century, on the orders of Queen Caroline, wife of George II.
Composed 18 January 1849. First published 1896. CR wrote this poem on St Agnes’s Eve to commemorate John Keats’s poem ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ (1820).
3. strong man grown weary of a race ‘Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race’ (Psalms 19:5).
4-5. Unto him a goodly lot… there thorns are not This refers to Christ’s parable of the sower, which appears in different versions in Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8. In this parable, a sower plants seeds, some of which do not grow because they ‘fell by the way side’, ‘upon a rock’, ‘among thorns’, while others ‘fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold’ (Luke 8:5, 6, 7, 8). The seeds which fall on thorny ground represent the rejection of God’s word, while those which fall on good ground represent ‘they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience’ (Luke 8:15). This parable of conversion is an odd choice here, as Keats was not religious, neither personally nor as a poet.
6. daisies emblems of innocence. Daisies feature frequently in Keats’s poems.
10-11. Here lies one whose name was writ/In water Keats’s epitaph.
12. basil alludes to Keats’s ‘Isabella and the Pot of Basil’ (1820).
Composed 6 February 1849. First published 1862. The manuscript version begins with two additional stanzas describing the death of a young girl. The original title of the poem was ‘A Song in a Song’.
1. roses emblems of love and beauty; here also with their secondary meaning of pride and danger.
2. laurel associated with Apollo, and, along with bay (l. 6), symbolizes poetic glory.
3. ivy emblem of faith and tenacity.
5. violets emblems of innocence and modesty.
6. bay signifies (poetic) glory.
7. withered leaves symbolize melancholy, here possibly book leaves.
Composed 7 February 1849. Unpublished.
Composed 9 February 1849. First published in The Germ 2 (March 1850), 177. First poetry volume 1862.
16. grass emblem of utility, submission. Biblical symbol of mortality.
24. glean with Ruth the widowed Ruth marries Boaz after he sees her gleaning (gathering or collecting what was left by the reapers) in his cornfield. Their union begins the earthly lineage of Christ (Ruth 2-3). See also ll. 65-7 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘Perhaps the self-same song that found a path/Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, /She stood in tears amid the alien corn’.
Composed 5 March 1849. First published in The Germ 1 (January 1850), 48. First poetry volume 1862.
1. Love, strong as Death ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame’ (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Composed April 1849. First published in The Germ 1 (January 1850), 20.
Title. See S. T. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, a Fragment’ (1816).
5. Led by a single star in Matthew 2:9-12, the wise men are led by a star to the newly born Christ child.
10. corn signifies riches.
15-16. And hears the nightingale/That sadly sings see John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
Composed 25 July 1849. First published 1862.
Part 2 composed 12 February 1849; parts 1 and 3 composed 10 May 1850. First published 1896. English translations of the Italian epigraphs are all from WMR (‘Notes’ 460).
Epigraph. ‘This heart sighs, and I know not wherefore.’
3. pall see note for l. 14 of ‘Hope in Grief.
17. vesper bell calls worshippers to evening church service.
18. CR’s footnote refers to l. 8 (‘Sweetest eyes were ever seen’) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Catarina to Camoens’ (1838), a poem written in the voice of Catarina de Ataı’de, lover and muse of the Portuguese poet Luis Vas de Camões (1524-80), who died while Camões was away in Africa.
39. matins morning church service; also called ‘Morning Prayers’.
46. clematis represent mental beauty.
47. hyacinths symbolize sport, play. 56. water-lilies signify silence.
60. lilies symbolize purity.
Epigraph. ‘It may be sighing for love, but to me it says not so.’
69. Throw the first stone ‘So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’ (John 8:7); Pharisee a self-righteous or hypocritical person (originally a member of a strictly religious ancient Jewish sect).
88. sweet is death see l. 12 of ‘Sweet Death’: ‘Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by’.
96. cordial in this case, of or pertaining to the heart.
99. exceeding great reward ‘After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward’ (Genesis 15:1).
101. palm emblem of victory.
122. Faithful is He Who promiseth ‘Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised)’ (Hebrews 10:23).
Epigraph. ‘Answer me, my heart, wherefore sighest thou? It answers: I want God - I sigh for Jesus.’
124. My heart is as a freeborn bird see l. 1 of ‘A Birthday’: ‘My heart is like a singing bird’.
138. True Vine ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman’ (John 15:1).
140. Tree of Life the tree of life grew in the Garden of Eden: ‘And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2:9); ‘In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations’ (Revelation 22:2). See also note for l. 2 of ‘A Pause of Thought’.
142. Growing beside the Living Well from John 14:11-15, where Jesus says that a man who drinks water from an earthly well will be thirsty again, but a man who drinks ‘the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, and that there will be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life’.
147. the Shadow of the Rock ‘And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land’ (Isaiah 32:2).
161. City builded without hands ‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’ (2 Corinthians 5:1).
163. the rest is but vanity see ll. 19-21 of ‘Hope in Grief. ‘Say not… fears are vain’.
170. Red roses represent love.
177. New Jerusalem ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name’ (Revelation 3:12). See also Revelation 21:2 and the note for l. 37 of ‘“They Desire a Better Country”’.
204. Hope deferred seems to numb see l. 2 of ‘A Pause of Thought’: ‘And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth’.
207. “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come” ‘And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely’ (Revelation 22:17).
Composed 9 May 1853. First published 1896. WMR writes that the first stanza is about him and the second portrays himself and DGR. He reveals that ‘There used to be a second stanza characterizing him [DGR]; it is torn out (by his rather arbitrary hand, beyond a doubt).’ He adds: ‘A laudatory phrase or two regarding myself ought possibly to have induced me to exclude the verse, but I cannot make up my mind to do that’ (‘Notes’ 491).
Composed 21 October 1853. First published 1862. See also ‘“Consider the Lilies of the field”’ (‘Solomon, most glorious in array’) and ‘Consider’.
Title. Christ’s parable of the lilies is a recurring theme of CR’s poetry. ‘And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’ (Matthew 6:28-9). See also Luke 12:27.
2. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
6. The poppy saith amid the corn poppies in general are emblems of evanescent pleasure, but scarlet poppies specifically signify fantastic extravagance, and red poppies consolation. For corn, see note for l. 10 of ‘Dream-Land’.
11. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
13. violets see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
19. grass see note for l. 16 of ‘Sweet Death’.
21. Lichen and moss lichen symbolizes dejection and solitude, while moss is both an emblem of a recluse and of maternal love.
Composed 10 November 1853. First published in WMR’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters With A Memoir, 2 vols. (Ellis and Elvey, 1895), vol. I, p. 138. First poetry volume 1904.
Title. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Everyone mentioned in the poem was a member.
2. Woolner in Australia sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825-92) moved briefly to Australia to search for gold.
3. Hunt… Cheops the painter Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was preparing for a painting trip to Egypt (home to Cheops, the pharaoh believed to have built the Great Pyramid of Giza) and Palestine.
4. shuns the vulgar optic DGR, stung by bad reviews of his work, was refusing to exhibit publicly.
5-6. William M. Rossetti… Coptic ‘It means that I, as art-critic of The Spectator, abused in that paper my fellows in the Præ-raphaelite Brotherhood, and that no one heeded my reviews. This joke was not historically true…’ (‘Notes’ 491). Coptic was the extinct, liturgical language of the Coptic Church.
7. Stephens F. G. Stephens (1828-1907), an art critic ‘who had scarcely come forward as an exhibiting artist at all’ (‘Notes’ 491).
9. Millais the painter John Everett Millais (1829-96).
11. A.R.A. Millais was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Art.
Composed 17 February 1854. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 7 (March 1863), 382. First poetry volume 1866.
Title. Commonly a small stream or brook, but also an archaic word meaning a boundary or limit.
Composed 27 June 1854. First published 1862. WMR writes that CR had ‘a horror of “the world” in the sense which that term bears in the New Testament; its power to blur all the great traits of character, to dead all lofty aims, to clog all the impulses of the soul aspiring to unseen Truth’ (‘Notes’ 470). See also John Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1820) for a similar changeling creature who enthrals and dooms the unwary.
4. subtle serpents gliding in her hair allusion to the snake-haired gorgon Medusa whose looks turn men to stone.
14. Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell? ‘For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell’ (Proverbs 5:3-5). CR discusses this proverb in FD 401.
Composed 28 June 1854. Unpublished.
Title. In art, the practice of drawing plaster casts made from classical figurative sculpture in order to learn anatomy.
1. It’s a weary life see the refrain of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Mariana’ (1830): ‘She said, “I am aweary, aweary, /I would that I were dead!”’
9. wag to go along, proceed.
Composed in ‘three stages’, from 1848 to 1854. First published as a whole by WMR in 1904.
Composed 14 February 1848. First published as ‘A Pause of Thought’ in The Germ 2 (February 1850), 57. See notes for ‘A Pause of Thought’.
Composed 18 April 1849. First published as ‘The End of the First Part’, 1896.
9. I must pull down my palace that I built see l. 293 of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Palace of Art’ (1832): ‘Yet pull not down my palace towers…’.
26. sweet-briar an emblem of poetry; thyme symbolizes activity.
Composed 25 July 1854. Lines 9-12 were published in 1893 as part of the poem ‘Heaven’s chimes are slow, but sure to strike at last’.
3. fret cause corrosion.
7. poppied wheat wheat represents prosperity; for poppies, see note for l. 6 of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’).
10. This sand is slow, but surely droppeth thro’ refers to an hourglass.
16. counterpoise an equal or counterbalancing weight.
31-40. Alas, I cannot build… What once I gave, again see sonnet 14 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
Composed 18 December 1854. First published 1862.
Composed 9 March 1855. First published 1862.
15. waxed grew in size.
16. girdle a belt or sash worn around the waist. 48. appropriate tears ‘crocodile’ tears.
49-50. What can it mean?… myself must echo, What? see ll. 33-4 of ‘Winter: My Secret’: ‘Perhaps my secret I may say, /or you may guess.’
Composed 20 November 1855. First published 1862.
5. poppies see note for l. 6 of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’).
6. corn see note for l. 10 of ‘Dream-Land’.
Composed 21 January 1856. Published 1862. WMR tells us that the manuscript poem ‘bears the too significant title, What happened to Me’ (‘Notes’ 480).
4. pied having sections or patches of different colours.
25. violet see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
Composed 20 April 1856. First published 1862.
5. wheat see note for l. 5, stanza 3 of ‘Three Stages’.
6. It is finished ‘When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost’ (John 19:30).
9. fallow field left unsown ‘For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns’ (Jeremiah 4:3).
14. Roses see note for l.1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’); bramble signifies lowliness, envy, remorse.
Composed 11 September 1856. First published 1862.
Composed 30 September 1856. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 9 (March 1864), 436-9. First poetry volume 1875. WMR tells us that DGR accused the poem of having ‘a modern vicious style’ and a ‘falsetto muscularity’, similar to that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. WMR disagrees. The original title was ‘A Fight Over the Body of Homer’ (‘Notes’ 460).
Title. Refers to Christ’s parable of the lowest room, which advises his followers to show humility by voluntary taking the ‘lowest place’ so that they can be invited to ‘go up higher’. The aspiration to the ‘lowest place’ is a frequent theme of CR’s poetry and prose. See Luke 14:7-14. See also ‘The Lowest Place’ and ‘“Sit down in the lowest room”’.
22. Hector Trojan prince.
23. Aeacides a family name referring to descendants of Aeacus, a son of Zeus and grandfather of Achilles and Ajax.
24. Homer Greek poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
31. Ajax Greek warrior who never receives help from the gods. His red right hand is possibly an allusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost II.173-4: ‘Should intermitted vengeance arm again/His red right hand to plague us?’
32. Juno Roman queen of the gods, wife of Jupiter, associated with Greek goddess Hera.
36. dross worthless, commonplace or trivial matter, waste.
77. dim Dian’s face Diana, Roman goddess of the moon.
111. Sevenfold Sacred Fire ‘Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound’ (Isaiah 30:26).
117. Our life is given us as a blank see l. 2 of ‘From the Antique’: ‘Doubly blank is a woman’s lot’. 124. Diomed Greek hero of Trojan war.
127. Achilles in his rage greatest warrior of the Iliad, the only mortal to experience all-consuming rage (menis). 132. Ilion site of the Trojan War.
133-7. He offered… to his friend refer to Achilles’ vengeful desire at the death of his friend Patroclus.
135. Trojans citizens of Troy, seized by the Greeks.
144. swart dark. 174. The wisest man Solomon (presumed to be the writer of Ecclesiastes).
176. Vanity of vanities see note for ll. 19-21 of ‘Hope in Grief.
187. As the sea is not filled ‘All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again’ (Ecclesiastes 1:7).
191. Jove Jupiter, chief Roman god, husband of Juno.
200. Greater than Solomon refers to Christ. See Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31.
215. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
216. blossom of the peach signifies ‘I am your captive’. 275. I lift mine eyes up to the hills ‘I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’ (Psalms 121:1).
280. And many last be first ‘But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first’ (Matthew 19:30). See also Matthew 20:16, Mark 9:35, 10:31 and Luke 13:30.
Composed 18 December 1856. First published 1862. WMR writes: ‘This very fine sonnet was published in the volume of 1862… bnt [sic] was omitted in subsequent issues. I presume that my sister, with over-strained scrupulosity, considered its moral tone to be somewhat open to exception’ (‘Notes’ 480).
5. hyacinth see note for l. 47 of ‘Three Nuns’.
Composed 19 December 1856. First published 1862.
25–6. He bore me… horse away see ll. 21–2 of Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1820): ‘I set her on my pacing steed/And nothing else saw all day long’.
29. He made me fast with bell and book the meaning of this line is enigmatic but could perhaps refer to a ritual of excommunication (as in the phrase ‘bell, book and candle’) or a binding spell.
Composed 24 December 1856. First published 1896. WMR writes: ‘The reference is apparently to our brother’s [DGR] studio, and to his constantly repeated heads of the lady whom he afterwards married, Miss Siddal’ (‘Notes’ 460). Siddal died of a laudanum overdose in 1862. DGR had her exhumed in 1869 in order to retrieve manuscript poems he had buried with her.
Composed 13 June 1857. First published 1862.
Title. ‘Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection’ (Hebrews 11:35).
5. I lift mine eyes ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’ (Psalms 121:1).
8. O Jesus, quicken me ‘I am afflicted very much: quicken me, O Lord, according unto thy word’ (Psalms 119:107). ‘Quicken’ means to bring to life or vitalize.
9. faded leaf‘we all do fade as a leaf (Isaiah 64:6).
17. broken bowl ‘Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern’ (Ecclesiastes 12:6).
20. cordial see note for l. 96 of ‘Three Nuns’.
Composed 27 August 1857. Originally part of ‘“The heart knoweth its own bitterness”’ (‘When all the overwork of life’) - see WMR’s note on that poem. First published in TF 158-9. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ (Matthew 20:7).
9. hope deferred see note for l. 2 of ‘A Pause of Thought’. See also l. 49 of ‘“The heart knoweth its own bitterness”’ (‘When all the over-work of life’): ‘Not in this world of hope deferred’.
11. Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard ‘But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him’ (1 Corinthians 2:9). See also note for l. 4 of ‘Lord, I am feeble and of mean account’.
15. There God shall join and no man part ‘Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’ (Matthew 19:6). See also Mark 10:9.
16. All one in Christ, so one—(please God!)—with me see l. 56 of ‘“The heart knoweth its own bitterness”’ (‘When all the over-work of life’): ‘I full of Christ and Christ of me.’
Composed 27 August 1857. First published 1896. WMR tells us that in ‘her volume Verses … she took the first and last stanzas of this vehement utterance, and, although altering the metre observably, and the diction not a little, she published them with the title, “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive”… I think it only right to give the poem in full…’ He also notes how ‘few things written by Christina contain more of her innermost self than this’ (‘Notes’ 472).
Title. ‘The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy’ (Proverbs 14:10).
25. To give, to give, not to receive ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35).
41. strait narrow, constricted.
44. A fountain sealed A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed’ (Song of Solomon 4:12).
49. hope deferred see note for l. 2 of A Pause of Thought’. See also l. 9 of ‘“Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive”’: ‘Not in this world of hope deferred’.
51-2. Eye hath not seen… full ‘enough’ see note for l. 4 of ‘Lord, I am feeble and of mean account’.
Composed 18 November 1857. First published 1862. One of CR’s best-known poems. Though WMR could not ‘account for the outburst of exuberance evidenced in this celebrated lyric’ (‘Notes’ 481), it seems to borrow its spirit from William Wordsworth’s ‘My heart leaps up when I behold’ (1802). A contemporary parody about a husband dreading his mother-in-law’s visit, concluding: ‘Because the mother of my wife/Has come - and means to stay with me’, appeared in ‘some illustrated comic paper’ and ‘amused Christina’ (‘Notes’ 481).
1. My heart is like a singing bird see l. 124 of ‘Three Nuns’: ‘My heart is as a freeborn bird’.
2. shoot a new young branch of a tree or plant. 6. halcyon happy and peaceful.
9. dais throne.
10. vair fur used for trimming garments.
Composed 23 November 1857. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 4 (August 1861), 329. First poetry volume 1862.
1. pink blossoms from mine apple tree apple blossom signifies preference.
Composed 23 November 1857. First published 1862. WMR writes: ‘This was at first named Nonsense; but, if there is method in some madness, there may be nous in some nonsense’ (‘Notes’ 481).
Composed probably between 8 December 1857 and 14 April 1858. First published 1862.
2. mien demeanour.
24. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’; beck brook.
25. faded leaves see note for l. 25 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’). See also note for ll. 4–5 of ‘Consider’.
Composed 28 June 1858. First published 1862. WMR informs us that DGR ‘considered this to be about the best of all Christina’s poems’ (‘Notes’ 482).
14. eyrie a nest or habitation found at high altitude, as on a cliff.
28. loth reluctant.
Composed 29 June 1858. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 3 (February 1861), 325. First poetry volume 1862. WMR writes: ‘This was… the first poem by Christina which excited marked attention’ (‘Notes’ 481).
Composed 9 July 1858. First published 1862.
6. sea of glass ‘And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God’ (Revelation 15:2); ‘And before the throne there was a glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind’ (Revelation 4:6).
7. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’. 12. selfsame the very same.
14. wash the spot Lady Macbeth’s murderous guilt manifests itself in an illusion of permanently blood-stained hands: ‘Out, damned spot! out, I say!’ (William Shakespeare, Macbeth V.i.38); snare trap.
26. Racked, roasted, crushed, wrenched limb from limb various forms of martyrdom of the saints.
27. offscouring of the world ‘Thou has made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people’ (Lamentations 3:45); ‘Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day’ (1 Corinthians 4:13).
59. laves washes (from the French laver).
73. Have pity upon me, ye my friends ‘Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me’ (Job 19:21).
87. clomb climbed.
88. pinions wings.
91. cars chariots.
101. aureole halo.
118. tester canopy.
Probably composed between 6 August and 15 October 1858. Originally part of the unpublished ‘“Only believe”’. First published in TF 238-9. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?’ (Genesis 27:46).
5. Dust to dust ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ (Genesis 3:19).
22. Those who sowed shall reap see note for l. 6 of ‘Vigil of St Bartholomew’.
25. clomb see note for l. 87 of ‘The Convent Threshold’.
29. In watered pastures fair ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters’ (Psalms 23:2).
33. Love casts out fear ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love’ (1 John 4:18).
Composed 31 January 1859. First published 1862.
20. lea-crops crop growing on pastureland that will eventually be replaced by another crop.
22. leas grasslands, meadows.
23. grass see note for l. 16 of ‘Sweet Death’.
25. moss see note for l. 21 of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’).
28. pied see note for l. 4 of ‘Shut Out’; daisies see note for l. 6 of ‘On Keats’.
31. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
Composed 15 February 1859. First published in Victoria Magazine I (May 1863), 40-41. First published poetry volume 1866. WMR writes: ‘Christina’s poem Spring [original title] relates to herself, and not at all to the poetess L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon). I suppose that, when the publishing-stage came on, Christina preferred to retire behind a cloud and so renamed the poem L.E.L.’ CR’s manuscript note references Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and WMR speculates that the poem alludes to the line ‘One thirsty for a little love’ in Barrett Browning’s ‘L.E.L.’s Last Question’ (1844) (‘Notes’ 482).
Epigraph. See note above..
14. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’..
26. lavender emblem of distrust, also assiduity.
27. rosemary symbol of remembrance; myrrh signifies gladness.
31. ruth pity or compassion.
36. scathe harm, injury.
Composed 22 April 1859. First Published 1862. This poem is perhaps the most popular with modern readers. Its dark, fairy-tale atmosphere recalls Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a story it helped to inspire. Although WMR tells us that CR claimed the poem ‘did not mean anything profound’, he admits that its ‘incidents are… at any rate suggestive’. These ‘suggestive’ incidents have spawned a colourful illustrating history (see Lorraine Janzen Kooistra’s Christina Rossetti and Illustration, Ohio University Press, 2002) from DGR’s original drawing to Playboy’s interpretation in 1973. WMR notes that ‘at times… people do not see the central point of the story, such as the authoress intended it’ (‘Notes’ 459). The poem’s themes of temptation, resistance and sacrifice encourage parallels with Christianity, while its endorsement of sisterhood is strengthened by its original dedication to MFR.
3–4. “Come buy” ‘Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters and he that hath no money, come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price’ (Isaiah 55:1).
10. Swart see note for l. 144 of ‘The Lowest Room’.
22. bullaces damsons.
23. greengages greenish fruit resembling a plum.
27. barberries deep red berries, from the spiny barberry shrub.
29. Citrons lemon-like fruits with thick peel.
76. ratel badger-like animal, also known as a ‘honey badger’.
83. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
120. furze a yellow-flowered shrub with spiny leaves, gorse. It signifies enduring affection.
126. precious golden lock in folklore, fairies prize golden hair, kidnapping or seducing golden-haired girls for fairy brides (see Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies, Viking, 1976).
129. honey from the rock ‘He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock’ (Deuteronomy 32:13).
160. daisies see note for l. 6 of ‘On Keats’.
179. Pellucid translucent.
185. Like two pigeons ‘And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring… two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her, and she shall be clean’ (Leviticus 12:7).
220. flags types of iris, symbolizing eloquence.
258. succous containing juice or sap.
260. Her tree of life see note for l. 140 of ‘Three Nuns’.
290. drouth drought.
300. cankerous ulcerous.
318. rime frost.
331-47. Came towards her hobbling… Gliding like fishes see ll. 110-18 of Robert Browning’s ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1842):
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives –
Followed the Piper for their lives.
395. Cross-grained contrary, intractable, perverse.
410. Like a rock of blue-veined stone ‘He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation upon a rock, and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it; for it was founded upon a rock’ (Luke 6:48).
415-16. orange-tree/White with blossoms orange blossoms signify chastity.
451. dingle hollow or dell.
471. Eat me, drink me ‘And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me’ (1 Corinthians 11:24). See also Christ’s words to his disciples during the sacrament of the Eucharist (Matthew 26:26-9, Mark 14:22-5 and Luke 22:7-20). See also Chapter 1 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) where Alice follows the instructions ‘Eat me’ and ‘Drink Me’.
479. fruit forbidden Adam and Eve are expelled by God from the Garden of Eden when they eat fruit that has been forbidden to them. ‘But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’ (Genesis 3:3).
491. aguish, feverish.
494. wormwood a bitter ingredient of vermouth and absinthe, used as a tonic.
Composed March 1860. First published 1862. WMR writes: ‘In the copy of my sister’s combined Poems (1895), I find this rather amusing entry: “The original John was obnoxious, because he never gave scope for ‘No, thank you”” (‘Notes’ 483).
Composed 17 December 1862. First published 1896.
Title. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord’ (Psalms 130:1).
Composed 3 January 1863. First published 1866.
13. prepense planned or intended in advance, premeditated.
Composed 7 May 1863. First published 1875.
Title. See note for the title of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’).
4-5. Like them we fade away/As doth a leaf ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away’ (Isaiah 64:6).
7. sparrows ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father’ (Matthew 10:29). See also Matthew 10:31 and Luke 12:6-7.
15. coil trouble, disturbance, ado.
17. birds that have no barn ‘Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?’ (Luke 12:24).
Composed 25 July 1863. First published 1866. WMR had the second stanza engraved on CR’s tombstone.
Title. See note for the title of ‘The Lowest Room’; Christ’s parable in Luke 14:7-14. The aspiration to the ‘lowest place’ is a frequent theme of CR’s poetry and prose. See also ‘The Lowest Room’.
Composed 20 January 1864. First published 1866.
1. roses see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
2. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
7. if she were as red or white ‘My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand’ (Song of Solomon 5:10). See also l. 10 of ‘“A Helpmeet for Him”’: ‘Tender and faithful, ruddy and white’.
Composed 28 January 1864. First published 1866.
I. heart of flesh ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh’ (Ezekiel 36:26).
9. ingrain dyed permanently.
Composed 1 March 1864. First published 1875.
Title. ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Romans: 7:24).
6. gad-about moving restlessly from one social activity to another.
II. the race refers to biblical comparison of life and running a race; ‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us’ (Hebrews 12:1); ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain’ (1 Corinthians 9:24). See also l. 3 of ‘“Our heaven must be within ourselves”’ and note for l. 3 of ‘On Keats’.
12. apace swiftly.
21. clog a heavy weight attached to an animal’s leg to impede movement.
24. Break off the yoke and set me free ‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage’ (Galatians 5:1).
16. corn see note for l. 10 of ‘Dream-Land’.
23. corn-flowers also known as ‘bachelor’s buttons’, a symbol of celibacy worn by young men in love.
24. the singing bird see note for l. 1 of ‘A Birthday’.
38. dross see note for l. 36 of ‘The Lowest Room’.
Composed October 1864. First published 1866.
20. bane ruin.
26. Quickening see note for l. 8 of ‘A Better Resurrection’.
33-6. You’re good for Madge, or good for Cis… not good for me? see ll. 9-12 of ‘No, Thank You, John’: ‘I dare say Meg or Mool would take/Pity upon you, if you’d ask:/And pray don’t remain single for my sake. Who can’t perform that task.’
59. unked grim, uncanny, dismal. WMR explains that the Rossetti children first heard this ‘country’ word from ‘our uncle Henry Polydore’ (brother to John Polidori, Byron’s physician and author of The Vampyre). Uncle Henry had first seen the word in the diary of ‘a country-woman with whom he was lodging’. One stormy night, she had observed: ‘“Oh, what an unkid [sic] night!”’ (‘Notes’ 485).
Lines 481-540 composed October 1861,ll. 1-480 composed January 1865. Lines 481-540 first published in Macmillan’s Magazine 7 (May 1863), 36. First poetry volume 1866.
Title. Alludes to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a Christian allegory about a pilgrim who overcomes delays and hardships during his journey from earth to heaven.
7. rime see note for l. 318 of ‘Goblin Market’.
25. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’; rosebuds represent youth and beauty. For roses in general, see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
31. Red and white poppies for red poppies, see note for l. 6 of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’); white poppies symbolize sleep.
50. corn see note for l. 10 of ‘Dream-Land’.
68. Was she a maid, or an evil dream? see l. 79 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘Was it a vision or a waking dream?’ See also Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1820) and CR’s ‘The World’.
69. Her eyes began to glitter and gleam see ll. 16 and 31 of Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’: ‘And her eyes were wild’, ‘And then I shut her wild wild eyes’.
100. mavis and merle song thrush and blackbird.
101. hodden woollen cloth.
103. daisies see note for l. 6 of ‘On Keats’. 110. reveillee a signal to awaken.
123. moss see note for l. 21 of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’).
124. astunt deceased.
161. weft horizontal threads in woven fabric.
178-9. An old, old mortal, cramped and double… a seething-pot see the Witches’ spell in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth IV.i.10-11: ‘Double, double toil and trouble;/Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’
181. atomy skeleton.
185. brooked tolerated.
203. Elixir of Life an alchemical mixture drunk to achieve immortality.
269. Let him sow, one day he shall reap ‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap’ (Ecclesiastes 11:4). See also Job 4:8.
440-41. Of wine-red roses… buds that unclose burgundy roses (‘wine-red’) symbolize unconscious beauty, while full white roses (‘snows… buds that unclose’) signify ‘I am worthy of you’.
458. Does she wake or sleep? see l. 80 of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’: ‘Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?’
516. Kirtle skirt.
Part I composed 8 November 1857; part II composed 17 February 1865. First published 1866.
7. ruth see note for l. 31 of ‘L.E.L.’. Here, also the secondary definition of contrition or remorse.
8. ‘So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen’ (Matthew 20:16). See also Matthew 19:30, Mark 10:31 and Luke 13:30.
27. bloodless lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’; warm rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
Composed 21 February 1865. First published Shilling Magazine 2 (June 1865), 193. First poetry volume 1875. In The Century magazine, Edmund Gosse declares this poem ‘one of the most solemn, imaginative, and powerful lyrics on a purely religious subject ever printed in England’ (p. 217).
Title. ‘Love of the World’ (Latin).
1-2. ‘Oh where are you going… along this valley track?’ see ll. 1-2 of W. H. Auden’s Epilogue from The Orators: An English Study (1932): ‘“O where are you going?” said reader to rider, /“That valley is fatal when furnaces burn”’; love-locks curls or tresses of hair of a peculiar or striking character.
9. seven biblically significant number commonly associated with the Apocalypse, where seven vials containing the wrath of God (plagues) are emptied on to the earth by seven angels. See Revelation 15-17.
14. A scaled and hooded worm. ‘The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree’ (Job 24:20).
20. This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back see Virgil’s Aeneid VI. 126-9: ‘the way down to hell is easy… But to retrace your steps, to find the way back to daylight – that is the task, the hard thing.’
Composed March 1865. First published 1866. Flowers points out that this poem was probably influenced by CR’s work with ‘fallen women’ at Highgate. WMR also credits Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853) as an inspiration. Presumably he is thinking of the novel’s heroine Esther Summerson, illegitimate child of Lady Dedlock.
Title. ‘Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me’ (Exodus 20:5).
1. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
3. Under the rose English translation of the Latin expression sub rosa, meaning ‘in secret’ or ‘in confidence’.
40. flout and scout treat contemptuously; make fun of, mock.
54. John Bull after the character introduced in satirist John Arbuth-not’s allegory The History of John Bull (1712). Represents the ‘typical’ English everyman: a plain-speaking, unsophisticated portly figure, often pictured with a bulldog.
95. grass see note for l. 16 of ‘Sweet Death’.
287. primroses symbolize early youth.
442. grazier one who grazes cattle.
535. pelf wealth, acquired dishonestly.
Composed 30 September 1865. First published 1875.
4. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
5. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
Composed 14 February 1866. First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 18 (May 1868), 86. First poetry volume 1875.
First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 19 (November 1868), 84. First poetry volume 1875.
1. violets see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
14. Ruth see note for l. 24 of ‘Sweet Death’.
First published in Macmillan’s Magazine 19 (March 1869), 422-3. First poetry volume 1875.
Title. ‘But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city’ (Hebrews 11:16).
2. my future is a blank see note for l. 117 of ‘The Lowest Room’.
14. Follow me here… follow here Jesus’s refrain to his disciples, as in Matthew 16:24: ‘Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ See also Matthew 4:19, 8:22, 9:9, 19:21 and Mark 2:14, 8:34.
34. serried pressed or crowded together, commonly used to describe soldiers standing in rows.
36. love almost to cast out fear ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love’ (1 John 4:18).
38. golden walls of home refer to New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, described in Revelation 21:18 as ‘pure gold, like unto clear glass’. For a detailed physical description of the city, see Revelation 21:15-22. See also note for l. 177 of ‘Three Nuns’.
First published in Scribner’s Magazine Monthly 3 (January 1872), 278. First poetry volume 1875. A popular Christmas carol (as ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’), set to music many times, but most famously in 1906 by Gustav Holst (1874-1934). Still a choral favourite today, with cover versions by twentieth-century pop musicians such as The Moody Blues, Crash Test Dummies and Cyndi Lauper.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
1. plum Flowers identifies this in her notes as ‘plumb’, a rare piece of slang for someone who possesses £100,000.
3. party rat politician who abandons his party.
4. sailor’s cat a braided naval whip, ‘cat-o-nine-tails’ or possibly a type of sailor’s knot - a ‘cat’s paw’ or ‘catshank’.
5. soldier’s frog a decorative fastening made of ornamental braiding which loops around a button.
First published 1872.
2. sere dry, withered.
First published 1872.
1. harebell emblem of grief, submission.
2. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
3. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
4. There’d be no rainbow still after the Flood, God tells Noah he will never again destroy the earth by flood. The rainbow will appear as a symbol of this divine promise to mankind, and as a reminder of humanity’s connection to God: ‘I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth’ (Genesis 9:13).
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872. This poem was recently released as a children’s book, illustrated by Judith Hoffman Corwin (HarperFestival, 2000).
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
3. sound to plunge downward or dive.
6. clocks this refers to the head of the dandelion when it turns to fine filaments. The time of day is said to correspond with the number of breaths it takes to blow this ‘dandelion clock’ away.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
5–8. when a nightingale sings… heaven is heaven see John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
First published 1872.
7. snowdrop emblem of hope and consolation.
First published 1875.
1. As rivers seek the sea ‘All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again’ (Ecclesiastes 1:7).
9. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
‘First published in Dublin University Magazine I, n.s. (1878), p. 104’ (Letters II.150), as discovered by Betty Flowers and recorded in her edition of the Complete Poems. Also published FD 11. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father’ (John 16:16). See ll. 13-14, sonnet 10 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘A little while, and life reborn annuls/Loss and decay and death, and all is love.’
5. how long? ‘My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long?’ (Psalms 6:3).
Jan Marsh tells us that although this poem’s ‘exact genesis… is hard to date precisely’, it was probably composed from 1879 to 1880, during which time Rossetti also attended a lecture series on Dante at University College London (CR 471). First published 1881. WMR states that this sonnet sequence is ‘a personal utterance - an intensely personal one’, and that its preface is designed to ‘draw off attention from the writer in her proper person’ (‘Notes’ 462). CR always refused permission for the sonnets to be published as excerpts, writing in 1886 to an American publisher that ‘Such compound work has a connection (very often) which is of interest to the author and which an editor gains nothing by discarding’ (Lona Mosk Packer, The Rossetti-Macmillan Letters, University of Carolina Press, 1963, p. 154). For a comprehensive structural critique, see William Whitla’s essay ‘Questioning the Convention: CR’s Sonnet Sequence “Monna Innominata”’ in David A. Kent (ed.), The Achievement of Christina Rossetti (Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 82-131.
Translations in the epigraphs are by Charles Cayley (Dante’s Divine Comedy, Longman, Brown Green and Longmans, 1853, and The Sonnets and Stanzas of Petrarch, Longmans, Green and Co., 1879), a scholar and close personal friend of CR. Although she turned down his marriage proposal, CR became his literary executor after his death. She admired his translation of Dante privately, and promoted it publicly in her article ‘Dante, An English Classic’ (published in Churchman’s Shilling Magazine and Family Treasury 2, 1867, pp. 200-205), and annotated Cayley’s Dante volumes for a second edition (never published). Jan Marsh notes that the sequence has ‘echoes… of Cayley’s versions’ (CR 472). CR also uses his translation in TF. For a fascinating study of Rossetti’s relationship with Cayley, see Kamilla Denman and Sarah Smith, ‘Christina Rossetti’s Copy of C. B. Cayley’s Divine Comedy’, Victorian Poetry, vol. 32 (West Virginia Press, 1994), pp. 315-36.
Title. ‘Unnamed Lady’ (Italian).
Prefatory note. Beatrice Dante’s muse; altissimo poeta… cotanto amante Dante, see Inferno 4.80; Laura Petrarch’s muse; Albigenses members of a Provencal religious movement that preached a dualistic doctrine of material evil and spiritual good; Great Poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Troubadours lyric poets of southern France, twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
Epigraph. ‘Since morn have said Adieu to darling friends’ (Purgatorio 8:3); ‘Love, with what force thou dost me now o’erthrow’ (Canzoniere 85.12).
13-14. Ah me… called them sweet see lines 1-2 of ‘The Key-Note’: ‘Where are the songs I used to know, /Where are the songs I used to sing?’
Epigraph. ‘It was that hour, which thaws the heart and sends’ (Purgatorio 8.1); ‘I’ve called to mind how I beheld you first’ (Canzoniere 20.3).
Epigraph. ‘Ah shadows, that are but for sight inane’ (Purgatorio 2.79); ‘Now by a phantom guide it is controlled’ (Canzoniere 277.9).
1-2.I dream of you to wake… slumber on see William Shakespeare’s Hamlet III.i.64-6: ‘To die, to sleep;/To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come’.
12-13. If thus to sleep… sweeter than to live see note for ll. 5-6 of ‘Sappho’. See also note above for ll. 1-2 of this sonnet.
14. Tho’ there be nothing new beneath the sun ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9). See also l. 22 of ‘Passing and Glassing’.
Epigraph. ‘Great fire may after little spark succeed’ (Paradiso 1.34);‘Take flight all thoughts and things that it contains, /And therein Love alone with you remains’ (Canzoniere 72.44-5).
8. weights and measures ‘Diverse weights, and diverse measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord’ (Proverbs 20:10).
Epigraph. ‘Love, who from loving none beloved reprieves’ (Inferno 5.103); ‘[Love] Required me into such sweet hopes to fall’ (Canzoniere 56.11).
3. leal loyal.
11. world without an end ‘Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen’ (Ephesians 3:21).
14. woman is the helpmeet made for man ‘And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him’ (Genesis 2:18). See also ‘“A Helpmeet for Him”’.
Epigraph. ‘“Now,” said he, rising, “mayest thou rightly set/A value on the love with which I flame’ (Purgatorio 21.133-4); ‘Me shall not Love release, /From such a knot, by pain or by decease’ (Canzoniere 59.17).
4. Lot’s wife while fleeing the destruction of Sodom, Lot’s wife disobeys God’s order not to look back at her home, and is turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:1-26).
Epigraph. ‘Here spring was always, and each plant’ (Purgatorio 28.143); ‘Love with me walks and talks, and with him I’ (Canzoniere 35.14).
5. Love builds the house on rock and not on sand ‘And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon sand’ (Matthew 7:26). See also Matthew 7:24 and Luke 6:48.
13-14. Tho’ jealousy be cruel… love is strong as death ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame’ (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Epigraph. ‘And breathe to God, “Nought recketh me, but thou”’ (Purgatorio 8.12); I hope to miss not pardon - pity I mean’ (Canzoniere 1.8).
1. “I, if I perish, perish”—Esther spake King Ahasueras is persuaded by his advisor Haman to carry out a slaughter of the Jews. One of his wives, Esther, also a Jew, risks death in approaching the king to plead for her people. She gains the king’s favour, and he stops the planned genocide, allowing the Jews to avenge themselves on their enemies: ‘Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish’ (Esther 4:6).
4. slake here, to quench or extinguish.
8. Harmless as doves and subtle as a snake ‘Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves’ (Matthew 10:16).
Epigraph. ‘Ah! white and honourable!’ (Purgatorio 3.8); ‘The soul, that warmest breath of virtue drew’ (Canzoniere 283.3).
8. turning to the wall a position of prayer: ‘Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord’ (Isaiah 38:2); ‘Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, saying…’ (2 Kings 20).
11-12. wrestle till the break/Of day refers to Jacob wrestling a stranger who turns out to be God - see Genesis 32:24-31 and Hosea 12:4.
Epigraph. ‘With better light, with better stars allied’ (Paradiso 1.40); ‘Life flyeth, and will not a moment stay’ (Canzoniere 272.1).
12. A little while see note for title of ‘“Yet a little while”’.
13-14. A little while… and all is love see ll. 13-14 of ‘Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome’: ‘Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws/Of time and change and mortal life and death.’
Epigraph. ‘Let people talk, and thou behind me go’ (Purgatorio 5.13); ‘Counting the chances that our life befall’ (Canzoniere 285.12).
5. prate chatter idly.
13. make it plain ‘And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it’ (Habbakuk 2:2).
Epigraph. ‘Love, that discoursing art within my soul’ (Purgatorio 2.112); ‘Of loveliness appeareth day by day’ (Canzoniere 13.2).
7. I too am crowned here probably with laurel, representing poetic glory.
8. jocund merry, cheerful.
‘And set we on the all-first Love our eyes’ (Paradiso 32.142); ‘But for my arms this burden was too sore’ (Canzoniere 20.5).
3. lily see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
4. sparrow see note for l. 7 of ‘Consider’.
Epigraph. ‘In His good pleasure we have each his peace’ (Paradiso 3.85); ‘Alone with these my thoughts, with altered hair’ (Canzoniere 30.32).
4. roses see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
8. corn see note for l. 10 of ‘Dream-Land’.
First published 1881. CR chose this as the dedicatory sonnet for A Pageant and Other Poems. Her mother was a key figure in her life, as Mary Arseneau’s Recovering Christina Rossetti (Palgrave, 2004) has recently explored.
8. loadstar guiding star, used in navigation.
13-14. Of love, whose blessed… mortal life and death see ll. 13-14, sonnet 10 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘A little while, and life reborn annuls/Loss and decay and death, and all is love.’ See also note for title of ‘“Yet a little while”’.
First published 1881.
1-2. Where are the songs… I used to sing? see ll. 13-14, sonnet 1 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang/When life was sweet because you called them sweet?’
6. sere see note for l. 2 of ‘A baby’s cradle with no baby in it’.
13. hips rose-hips - bright, winter-blooming berries; haws hawthorn berries, emblems of hope.
First published 1881.
First published 1881.
Title. ‘Out of the Depths’ (Latin). ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord’ (Psalms 130:1).
First published 1881.
Title. WMR tells us (‘Notes’, 488) that this phrase is from a poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), probably ‘The Treasures of the Deep’ (1839): ‘What hidest thou in thy treasure-caves and cells?/Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main! —’ (ll. 1-2). Hemans, a widely read and popular poet of her day, fell out of fashion in the twentieth century, but her reputation, and her work, is now being recovered.
First published 1881.
1. bane ruin, woe.
10. Love all in all ‘When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28).
First published 1881.
Title. See Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Mariana’ (1830) and ‘Mariana in the South’ (1833), both about a woman pining for love.
6. violet see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
10. hoards up a treasure ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal’ (Matthew 6:19-20).
First published 1881.
5. withered roses emblem of transient impression.
10. tiring-glass mirror for ‘attiring’ oneself; from tire – to get ready or dress.
11. lavender see note for l. 26 of ‘L.E.L.’.
12. violet see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
22. nothing new beneath the sun see note for l. 14, sonnet 3 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
First published 1881.
1. Thus am I mine own prison see ll. 25-6 of Richard Lovelace’s ‘To Althea from Prison’ (1649): ‘Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage.’ See also ll. 8-9 of William Wordsworth’s ‘Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room’ (1802): ‘In truth the prison, unto which we doom/Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me’.
13. I am not what I have nor what I do see ll. 4-5, sonnet 1 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘So far between my pleasures are and few./While when you do not come, what I do I do’.
14. what I was I am, I am even I ‘I am that I am’ (Exodus 3:14).
6. sanative having the power to heal, curing.
7. Death shall ply his sieve biblical reference to the ‘sifting’ of souls: ‘For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth’ (Amos 9:9); ‘And the Lord said, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat’ (Luke 23:31).
13-14. O death… where is thy victory? ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:55).
First published 1881.
5. sere see note for l. 2 of ‘A baby’s cradle with no baby in it’.
6. daffodil symbol of regard.
8. roses see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’); nightingales see John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
First published 1881.
Epigraph. ‘A dark wood’. From Dante’s Inferno 1.3. 1. Awake or sleeping (for I know not which) see note for l. 458 of ‘The Prince’s Progress’.
9. ivy see note for l. 3 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
16-20. Such mirth… reasonings wild or weak see ll. 57-60 of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819): ‘While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad/In such an ecstasy!/Still wouldst thou sing, and I have earn in vain -/To thy high requiem become a sod.’
54. more blank my lot see note for l. 117 of ‘The Lowest Room’.
77. a rebel against light ‘They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof (Job 24:13).
88. My strength was weakness see l. 5 of ‘“A Helpmeet for Him”’.
First published 1881. True to its subtitle, this ambitious sequence comprises twenty-eight sonnets. WMR speculates that ‘the majority of it must have been written with a definite intention that its various constituent parts should form one whole’. Yet he adds that ‘when the general framework was getting into shape, two or three outlying sonnets were pressed into the service’ (‘Notes’ 463). Diane D’Amico suggests that ‘Later Life’ is a response to ‘Monna Innominata’. She compares the silence of the final stanza of ‘Monna Innominata’ with the hope of heavenly reunion at the conclusion of ‘Later Life’ (Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender, and Time, Louisiana State University Press, 1999, pp. 154-5).
1-2. Before the mountains… God was God ‘Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God’ (Psalm 90:2).
9. tho’ He slay us we will trust in Him ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him’ (Job 13:15).
5. the race see note for l. 11 of ‘Who Shall Deliver Me?’.
3. wordless tearless dumbness see l. 1 of ‘A Better Resurrection’: ‘I have no wit, no words, no tears’.
13. the Thief in Paradise when Jesus is crucified along with two thieves, one man derides Jesus, while the other thief defends him. Jesus then promises his defender that he will be able to enter paradise, though he is a thief (see Luke 23:39-43).
1-2. To love… that is not well see ll. 13-14 of ‘Remember’: ‘Better by far you should forget and smile/Than that you should remember and be sad.’
6. Our life… turn to Thee ‘Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life’ (John 8:12).
1. Sirius… Pole Star Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. The Pole Star’s (North Star) position in the sky is constant, making it useful for celestial navigation.
10. “Thy dead… nor hide thy slain” ‘Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead’ (Isaiah 26:19); ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live’ (John 5:25).
Footnote. ll. 82-4 from Canto 5 of Dante’s Inferno: ‘As doves, summoned by desire, come with wings poised and motionless to the sweet nest, borne by their will through the air’ (trans. John D. Sinclair, The Divine Comedy, Oxford University Press, 1961).
See sonnet 10 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
See sonnet 3 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
4. bruit report.
11. cautery an instrument used (in surgery) to burn or sear tissue.
On pages 56-7 of her devotional prose-work Letter and Spirit (1883), CR expands on this sonnet’s theme: ‘To begin with Adam and Eve; one is so accustomed to contemplate the Fall as well-nigh simultaneous in both, that perhaps the subsequent Christ-likeness of Adam, presumably in forgiving and cherishing, certainly in retaining, the wife who had cost him life and all things, may pass unnoticed. That Eve responded to his love and patience we need not doubt. Nor need we attempt to settle which (if either) committed the greater sin; Adam’s faithful love… remains in any case.’ See also John Milton’s Paradise Lost XII:645-9, where Adam and Eve leave Paradise hand in hand.
1. Let woman fear… bear to learn ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’ (1 Timothy 2:12).
3. Abstruse hard to understand.
11. cloyed surfeited, too full of something rich or sweet.
8. Cathay China.
6. ivy see note for l. 3 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
WMR writes that the ‘reference to foreign travel in this sonnet and its successor relates to the year 1865, when Christina, along with our mother, accompanied me to North Italy through Switzerland’ (‘Notes’ 463).
2. nightingales see John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1819).
13. sparrow see note for l. 7 of ‘Consider’.
1-2. The mountains… when I saw them first ‘Wherein lies the sadness of mountain scenery? For I suppose many besides myself have felt depressed when approaching the “everlasting hills”’ (TF 111).
3-4. And afterwards… chords which burst ‘Then from a window I faced them [mountains] again. And, lo! the evening flush had turned snow to a rose, “and sorrow and sadness fled away”’ (TF 111).
11. forget-me-not see TF 113 for a passage which recounts CR’s memory of the forget-me-nots growing on Mount St Gotthard.
9-14. Oh foolishest… in thy quest see ll. 17-20 of ‘A Pause of Thought’: ‘Alas thou foolish one!… Turnest to follow it.’
1. balk defeat, disappointment, failure.
WMR observes that ‘This forecast of death came singularly true; for, if one had been writing a condensed account of Christina Rossetti’s last days and hours in December 1894, one might have described them in these terms. Perhaps, however, few among her Christian readers will suppose that she “may have missed the goal at last.” The reference to a “saint rejoicing on her bed” may glance at Maria’ (‘Notes’ 463).
1–2. I have dreamed of Death… Not in a dream see note for ll. 1–2, sonnet 3 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
7. ruth see note for l. 31 of ‘L.E.L.’.
First published in TF 13. First poetry volume 1893. The passage in TF which immediately precedes this poem discusses Adam:
Adam’s initial work of production… was sin, death, hell, for himself and his posterity.
Not that he made them in their first beginning: but he, as it were, re-made them for his own behoof. Never had the flame kindled upon him or the smell of fire passed upon him, but for his own free will, choice, and deed.
Title. ‘Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God’ (1 Corinthians 4:5).
1. the mystery biblically, ‘the mystery’ is associated with Christ and God. See, for example, Ephesians 3:9: ‘And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.’
6. Measures the depth beneath, the height above ‘Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea’ (Job 11:7–9).
9. Silently telling her bead-history praying (using rosary beads).
First published in TF 16. First poetry volume 1893.
1. Joy is but sorrow ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy’ (John 16:20).
7. moon so fair and frail see the introductory note for ‘O ye who love today’.
10. heaps up treasure see note for l. 10 of ‘Mariana’.
First published in TF 23. First poetry volume 1893. This poem is the entry for 29 January in TF. The prose entry for 28 January is about using time wisely, while the entry for January 27 relates time-wasting specifically to writer’s block:
Much good work has been hindered by such an anxiety to do better as deters one from promptly doing one’s best…
Suppose our duty of the moment is to write: why do we not write? — Because we cannot summon up anything original, or striking, or picturesque, or eloquent, or brilliant.
But is a subject set before us? — It is.
Is it true? — It is.
Do we understand it? — Up to a certain point we do.
Is it worthy of meditation? — Yes, and prayerfully
Is it worthy of exposition? — Yes, indeed.
Why then not begin? —
‘From pride and vain glory, Good Lord, deliver us.’
Title. ‘Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time’ (Colossians 4:5).
1. hope deferred see note for l. 2 of ‘A Pause of Thought’. See also l. 9 of ‘Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive’ and l. of ‘“The heart knoweth its own bitterness”’ (‘When all the over-work of life’).
8. harvest refers to the end of the world, when human souls will be ‘harvested’ on Judgement Day. See, for example, Matthew 13:38-9: ‘The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.’
First published in TF 33. First poetry volume 1893. This poem is the entry for 15 February in TF. The prose passage preceding it on 14 February concerns Valentine’s Day, about which CR observes:
With St. Valentine’s Day stands popularly associated the interchange of ‘Valentines’: this custom having its origin, we are informed, in a pagan ceremony wisely exchanged for a Christian observance.
And thus our social habit, even if degenerate, assumes a certain dignity: we connect it not merely with mirth and love, but with sanctity and suffering. The love exhibits a double aspect and accords, or should accord, with heaven as well as with earth.
It was CR’s custom to compose a Valentine’s Day poem for her mother every year. Although CR’s mother was still living, when this poem was first published, her sister Maria, who never married and joined an Anglican Sisterhood, had been dead for almost ten years. WMR connects this poem with MFR: ‘I consider this poem related to Maria Francesca Rossetti, who had died in 1876’ (‘Notes’ 469).
Title. ‘So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better’ (1 Corinthians 7:38).
1. My love whose heart is tender ‘Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heard-est what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord’ (2 Kings 22:19).
2. A moon lacks light WMR notes that CR often called their sister playfully ‘Moon’ or ‘Moony’ (‘Notes’ 469). See also the introductory note for ‘O ye who love today’.
First published in TF 63. First poetry volume 1893.
Epigraph. ‘But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness’ (Isaiah 34:11).
1. Unripe harvest see note for l. 2 of ‘“Redeeming the Time”’.
First published TF 75. First poetry volume 1893.
20. all in all see note for l. 10 of ‘At Last’. See also 1 Corinthians 12:6: ‘And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.’
First published in TF 93. First poetry volume 1893. The entry which immediately precedes this poem in TF tells of a general whose family fed a tamed robin. ‘One day, coming home from shooting he aimed his last random shot at a speck in the sky.’ After that, ‘the tame robin never came again: and the soldier who loved it, and as he believed shot it, could not, when I listened to him, tell the story without emotion.’ The entry concludes: ‘Let us have mercy on each other and forgive: even a wronged robin’s silence and absence were hard to bear.’
7. vanity of vanities see note for ll. 19-21 of ‘Hope in Grief.
First published TF 110. First poetry volume 1893.
1. Roses see note for l.1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
12. no more sea ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea’ (Revelation 21:1).
First published in TF 114. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours’ (1 Corinthians 1:2). Also the title of CR’s 1881 devotional prose-work.
1. The lowest place see note for the title of ‘The Lowest Room’.
7. For Right Hand or for Left Hand ‘But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared’ (Mark 10:40). See also Matthew 20:23.
First published in TF 150. First poetry volume 1893.
6. dule grief.
Lines 1-4 composed 25 January 1854; dates of composition of ll. 5-12 unknown. First published in TF 213-14. First poetry volume 1893. The prose passage which precedes this entry in TF recalls the dying MFR’s planning of her own funeral. MFR chides CR for wanting to wear the ‘hood and hatband’ mourning dress, saying, ‘Why make everything as hopeless looking as possible?’ The funeral guests ‘all turned out in harmony with her holy hope and joy’, and CR observes ‘the sun… made a miniature rainbow in my eyelashes’, and wishes that ‘all who love enjoy cheerful little rainbows at the funerals of their beloved ones’.
2. work of faith ‘Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father’ (1 Thessalonians 1:3).
3. race of life see note for l. 11 of ‘Who Shall Deliver Me?’.
7. magnifical magnificent.
9. While over all a dome must spread see ll. 1-2 and 46 of S. T. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, a Fragment’: ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree’, ‘I would build that dome in air’.
First published in “New and Old:” For Seed-Time and Harvest 16 (January 1888), 22. First poetry volume 1888. On p. 57 of TF, CR addresses the question of women’s weakness in terms which echo this poem:
In common parlance Strong and Weak are merely relative terms: thus the “strong” of one sentence will be the “weak” of another.
We behold the strong appointed to help the weak: Angels who “excel in strength,” men. And equally the weak the strong: woman, “the weaker vessel,” man.
This, though it should not inflate any, may fairly buoy us all up. For every human creature may lay claim to strength, or else to weakness: in either case to helpfulness. “We that are strong,” writes St. Paul, proceeding to state a day of the strong. We who are weak may study the resources of the weak.
Title. See note for l. 14, sonnet 5 of ‘Monna Innominata’.
5. Her strength with weakness is overlaid ‘And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me’ (2 Corinthians 12:9).
7. stays supports, steadies.
10. ruddy and white ‘My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand’ (Song of Solomon 5:10). See also l. 7 of ‘Beauty is Vain’.
First published in the preface of FD. First poetry volume 1893. CR’s preface to FD invokes ‘A dear saint’ who ‘once pointed out to me Patience as our lesson in the Book of Revelations’. This ‘saint’ is MFR, whose family nickname, ‘Moony’, is alluded to in the poem’s comparison of Patience to a moon. See also the notes for ‘Patience must dwell with love, for Love and Sorrow’ and also ‘What is the beginning? Love. What the course? Love still’.
6. apace swiftly.
First published in FD 12. First poetry volume 1893.
4. And grant me grace to hear and grace to see ‘hear’ and ‘see’ are common biblical injunctions which refer to mankind’s ability to perceive God. For example, Deuteronomy 29:4: ‘Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day’. In the prose passage preceding this poem in FD, CR observes:
A reader and hearers stand in graduated degrees of knowledge or of ignorance… The reader studying at first hand is in direct contact with God’s Word: hearers seek instruction of God through men. The reader requires most gifts: hearers may exercise fully as much grace. Most of us are hearers: having performed conscientiously the duty of hearers, we shall be the less prone to make mistakes if ever providentially promoted to be readers.
First published in FD 75. First poetry volume, 1893. In FD, the sentence immediately preceding this poem reads: ‘It needs profound patience, patience born of love and sustained by love, to achieve final perseverance.’
First published in FD 88. First poetry volume 1893.
1. face of the deep ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’ (Genesis 1:2).
4. gourd of a day and a night refers to an episode in the Book of Jonah when God makes a giant gourd grow in order to shelter Jonah, then infests it with a worm so that it withers and dies. When Jonah protests, God says, ‘Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night’ (Jonah 4:10).
5. harvest see note on l. 8 of ‘Redeeming the Time’.
First published in FD 116-17. First poetry volume 1893. In FD, CR makes this observation about patience in the prose passage preceding this poem:
Patience goes with sorrow, not with joy. And by a natural instinct sorrow ranges itself with darkness, joy with light. But eyes that have been super-naturalized recognize, not literally only, but likewise in a figure, how darkness reveals more luminaries than does the day: to the day appertains a single sun; to the night innumerable, incalculable, by man’s perception inexhaustible stars.
See also ‘O ye who love today’. See too the introductory note for ‘What is the beginning? Love. What the course? Love still’.
First published in FD 173-4. First poetry volume 1893.
1. counterpoise see note for l. 16 of ‘Three Stages’.
6. bier a stand for a coffin or a corpse before burial.
8. sere see note for l. 2 of ‘A baby’s cradle with no baby in it’.
9. congruous corresponding to physical structure, harmonious.
11. chanticleer cock. Also alludes to the episode in the Gospels where Christ prophesies that Peter will deny him three times before the cock crows. See Matthew 26:75, Mark 14:30,14:72, Luke 22:34, 22:61 and John 13:38.
14. ballasts holds back with its weight (from ballast, load, weight or burden).
First published in FD 180-81. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months’ (James 5:17).
5. dross see note for l. 36 of ‘The Lowest Room’.
First published in FD 198. First poetry volume 1893. In FD, the prose passage preceding this poem reads: ‘Experience follows and gives thanks; faith precedes and offers praise. Experience keeps pace with time; faith outstripping time forestalls eternity.’
2. Still setting to her seal that God is true ‘He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true’ (John 3:33).
3. Beneath the sun, she knows, is nothing new see note for l. 22 of ‘Passing and Glassing’.
4-5. All things that go… man’s still recommencing race see note for l. 1 of ‘Confluents’. See also Ecclesiastes 9:11: ‘I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’
9. “My God doth all things well” ‘And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak’ (Mark 7:37).
First published in FD 201. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away’ (1 Corinthians 13:8).
7. myrtles emblems of love; olive symbolizes peace.
8. Dove-eyed Love ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes’ (Song of Solomon 1:15). See also Song of Solomon 4:1 and 5:12. Twelve-fruited Tree see note for l. 140 of ‘Three Nuns’.
First published in FD 205. First poetry volume 1893.
3. fume irritation.
10. in blow a state of blossoming, blooming.
First published FD 254. First poetry volume 1893.
First published in FD 255. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity’ (1 Corinthians 13:13).
7. olive, grape, or corn taken together, these are symbols of peace and riches, general prosperity.
9. rose see note for l. 1 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
13. New Jerusalem see note for l. 177 of ‘Three Nuns’ and for l. 37 of ‘“They Desire a Better Country”’.
14. palm-tree ‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon’ (Psalms 92:12).
First published in FD 257-8. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’ (Isaiah 14:12). See also John Milton’s Paradise Lost V.710-11: ‘His count’nance, as the Morning Starr that guides/The starrie flock, allur’d them, and with lyes.’
2. car see note for l. 91 of ‘The Convent Threshold’.
7. nebular consisting of or relating to a cluster of stars.
First published in FD 278. First poetry volume 1893. In FD, the passage preceding this poem wonders:
What is time? It is not subtracted from eternity, which if diminished would fall short of being eternal: neither is it substituted awhile for eternity, which thus would assume both end and beginning: neither is it simultaneous with eternity, because it is in Him Who inhabiteth eternity (not time) that we ourselves day by day live and move and have our being.
4. amort lifeless, spiritless.
First published in FD 285. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. [Untitled 1892] ‘Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment’ (John 7:24).
8. “Fear not: it is I” ‘But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid’ (John 6:20).
First published in FD 326. First poetry volume 1893.
1. Launch out into the deep ‘Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught’ (Luke 5:4).
First published in FD 350. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. See note on the title of ‘The Lowest Room’, note for l. 1 of ‘The Lowest Place’ and note for l. 7 of ‘Do this, and He doeth it’.
First published in FD 391. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. See note for title of ‘“Consider the Lilies of the Field”’ (‘Flowers preach to us if we will hear’). See also ‘Consider’.
3. lilies see note for l. 60 of ‘Three Nuns’.
First published in FD 401. First poetry volume 1893.
6. Walk as we walked, much less by sight than faith ‘For we walk by faith, not by sight’ (2 Corinthians 5:7).
7. scathe see note for l. 37 of ‘L.E.L.’.
8. dule see note for l. 6 of ‘Of each sad word which is more sorrowful’.
13. happy eyes! whose tears are wiped away ‘He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it’ (Isaiah 25:8).
First published in FD 406. First poetry volume 1893. See also ‘The World’ and ‘“Standing afar off for the fear of her torment”’.
Title. ‘And upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth’ (Revelation 17:5).
3. mesh thee in her wanton hair see l. 9, sonnet 8 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘She trapped him with one mesh of silken hair’.
7. No wine is in her cup, but filth is there ‘And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication’ (Revelation 17:4).
13. Her scarlet vest and gold and gem and pearl see note for l. 7. See also Revelation 18.16: ‘And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!’
14. set on fire ‘Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her’ (Revelation 18:8).
First published in FD 410. First poetry volume 1893.
Title. ‘For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it’ (Matthew 8:9). See also Luke 7:8.
7. we may sit, high or low see note on the title of ‘The Lowest Room’ and note for l. 1 of ‘The Lowest Place’.
10. And loss has left no barren trace see l. 11, sonnet 2 of ‘Monna Innominata’: ‘As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow’.
First published in FD 418-19. First poetry volume 1893. See notes for ‘Babylon the Great’.
Title. ‘Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come’ (Revelation 18:10).
First published in FD 439. First poetry volume 1893. The prose paragraph preceding this poem in FD warns that scriptural study can be a distraction from the practical application of Christianity, relating its dangers to the parable of the wise virgins (see note for l. 5 below):
Symbolism affords a fascinating study: wholesome so long as it amounts to aspiration and research; unwholesome when it degenerates into a pastime. As literal shadows tend to soothe, lull, abate keenness of vision; so perhaps symbols may have a tendency to engross, satisfy, arrest incautious souls unwatchful and unprayerful lest they enter into temptation.
5. Virgins who keep vigil and are wise refers to the parable of the virgins waiting for their bridegroom to arrive. The wise virgins bring extra oil for their lamps, while the foolish virgins run out of oil and have to go out to buy more. The bridegroom arrives while they are away, and when they return, he refuses to let them in, saying, ‘I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh’ (Matthew 25:12-13). See also Matthew 25:1-13.
6. To sow among all sowers who shall reap ‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy’ (Psalms 126:5).
8. And tread the uphill track to Paradise see ‘Up-Hill’.
First published in FD 440. First poetry volume 1893. In FD, the sentence immediately preceding this poem reads, ‘Self-willed humility is pride in masquerade’.
Title. ‘For who hath despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth’ (Zechariah 4:10).
1. violets see note for l. 5 of ‘Song’ (‘Oh roses for the flush of youth’).
2. daisies see note for l. 6 of ‘On Keats’.
First published in FD 489. First poetry volume 1893.
6. A little while see note for l.12, sonnet 10 of ‘Monna Innominata’. See also note on the title of ‘“Yet a little while”’.