New Selected Poems

Christina Rossetti, Rachel Mann

• Publisher: Carcanet Classics
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781784109066
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784109073
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Since C.H. Sisson's ground-breaking Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1984), Christina Rossetti's readership has burgeoned. Almost a century ago Ford Madox Ford claimed her as 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced', and - as Valentine Cunningham recently declared - she now sits at top table with Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Barrett Browning. Feminist and queer scholars have since laid claim to Rossetti; but her Anglo-Catholic faith was never incidental to the power of even her most secular poems and is at the heart of her imaginative work. As an Anglican priest and poet, Rachel Mann in her selection appreciates Rossetti's ambition while attending, too, to recent scholarship that focuses on the religious, feminist and fantastical elements in her work.

25

Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)

GOBLIN MARKET

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

‘Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpecked cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries; –

All ripe together

In summer weather, –

Morns that pass by,

Fair eves that fly;

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine,

Pomegranates full and fine,

Dates and sharp bullaces,

Rare pears and greengages,

Damsons and bilberries,

Taste them and try:

Currants and gooseberries,

Bright-fire-like barberries,

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South, 26

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;

Come buy, come buy.’

Evening by evening

Among the brookside rushes,

Laura bowed her head to hear,

Lizzie veiled her blushes:

Crouching close together

In the cooling weather,

With clasping arms and cautioning lips,

With tingling cheeks and finger tips.

‘Lie close,’ Laura said,

Pricking up her golden head:

‘We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?’

‘Come buy,’ call the goblins

Hobbling down the glen.

‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura,

You should not peep at goblin men.’

Lizzie covered up her eyes,

Covered close lest they should look;

Laura reared her glossy head,

And whispered like the restless brook:

‘Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

Down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket,

One bears a plate,

One lugs a golden dish

Of many pounds weight.

How fair the vine must grow

Whose grapes are so luscious;

How warm the wind must blow 27

Through those fruit bushes.’

‘No,’ said Lizzie, ‘No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us,

Their evil gifts would harm us.’

She thrust a dimpled finger

In each ear, shut eyes and ran:

Curious Laura chose to linger

Wondering at each merchant man.

One had a cat’s face,

One whisked a tail,

One tramped at a rat’s pace,

One crawled like a snail,

One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,

One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.

She heard a voice like voice of doves

Cooing all together:

They sounded kind and full of loves

In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck

Like a rush-imbedded swan,

Like a lily from the beck,

Like a moonlit poplar branch,

Like a vessel at the launch

When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen

Turned and trooped the goblin men,

With their shrill repeated cry,

‘Come buy, come buy.’

When they reached where Laura was

They stood stock still upon the moss,

Leering at each other,

Brother with queer brother; 28

Signalling each other,

Brother with sly brother.

One set his b...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Goblin Market
• In the Round Tower at Jhansi
• Dream-Land
• At Home
• Love From the North
• Winter Rain
• Cousin Kate
• The Lambs Of Grasmere (1860)
• A Birthday
• Remember
• After Death
• An Apple-Gathering
• Echo
• Winter: My Secret
• Another Spring
• Fata Morgana
• No, Thank You, John
• Twilight Calm
• Wife to Husband
• Shut Out
• Song
• Bitter for Sweet
• Sister Maude
• The First Spring Day
• The Convent Threshold
• Up-Hill
• ‘A Bruised Reed Shall He Not Break’
• A Better Resurrection
• The Three Enemies
• One Certainty
• Sweet Death
• A Testimony
• Old And New Year Ditties
• from The Prince’s Progress
• Spring Quiet
• A Portrait
• One Day
• What Would I Give?
• Memory
• Vanity of Vanities
• L.E.L.
• Eve
• The Queen of Hearts
• Dost Thou not Care?
• Weary In Well-Doing
• Good Friday
• The Lowest Place
• A Dirge
• Dead Hope
• A Daughter of Eve
• Amor Mundi
• A Christmas Carol
• When My Heart is Vexed, I Will Complain
• ‘In The Meadow – What In The Meadow?’
• ‘Crying, my little one, footsore and weary’
• ‘Margaret Has A Milking-Pail’
• ‘January Cold Desolate’
• ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’
• The Key-Note
• Pastime
• Italia, Io Ti Saluto!
• Yet A Little While
• Monna Innominata
• De Profundis
• A Life’s Parallels
• Golden Silences
• Mariana
• One Sea-side Grave
• A Hope Carol
• A Candlemas Dialogue
• He Cannot Deny Himself
• Balm in Gilead
• Advent Sunday
• Advent
• Christmastide
• St John the Apostle
• Epiphany
• Epiphanytide
• Vigil of the Presentatio
• Feast of the Presentation
• The Purification of St Mary The Virgin
• Vigil of the Annunciation
• Vigil of St Peter
• St Peter
• Sunday Before Advent
• Lay Up For Yourselves Treasures in Heaven
• Sappho
• Two Thoughts of Death
• From the Antique
• Seasons
• Holy Innocents
• A Bed of Forget-Me-Nots
• A Chilly Night
• Introspective
• The Summer Is Ended
• A Study (A Soul)
• The Heart Knoweth its Own Bitterness
• Three Stages
• The Last Look
• Next of Kin
• All Saints
• Autumn
• In an Artist’s Studio
• Maude
• Index of Titles
• About the Author
• Copyright