Selected Poems: Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti, C. H. Sisson

• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781847773999
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Christina Rossetti was in a sense the first poet of the Pre-Raphaelites, her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) having been - as if by accident - the writing from that group which first caught public attention. It contains many of her best poems. Later work - devotional poems, love lyrics and descriptive pieces - extended the themes and forms of her first remarkable collection. It is remarkable, but in a quiet and intense way, not in the manner of those who seem to have learned from her among her contemporaries. Ford Madox Ford, who had a subtle ear for the unemphatic excellence of the nineteenth-century writers, called her 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced'. Her modern admirers are many, especially among the poets. Philip Larkin speaks of her poetry as 'unequalled for its objective expression of happiness denied and a certain unfamiliar steely stoicism'. In this selection C.H. Sisson presents a wide range of her work and in his biographical and critical introduction suggests fresh perspectives on it. Sisson also includes here Rossetti's long-unavailable 'Maude, A Story for Girls', which was written when she was very young and gives some indication of her cast of mind and her skills as a writer of prose fiction. The character of Maude is a severe self-portrait, wry at her own expense. As Sisson says, 'with any poet the starting-point, social as well as literary, is worth finding out about'.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• Couplet
• Mary Magdalene
• Spring Quiet
• Song
• Bitter For Sweet
• Three Stages
• One Certainty
• Two Pursuits
• A Testimony
• Song
• After Death
• Looking Forward
• Remember
• Seeking Rest
• A Portrait
• Endurance
• Withering
• Twilight Calm
• Two Thoughts of Death
• Is And Was
• The Three Enemies
• The Summer Is Ended
• From The Antique
• For Rosaline's Album
• Next Of Kin
• A Pause
• Holy Innocents
• A Wish
• Seasons
• Ballad
• From The Antique
• Listening
• Echo
• The First Spring Day
• My Dream
• The Last Look
• May
• Old And New Year Ditties
• Shut Out
• A Chilly Night
• In The Lane
• A Bed Of Forget-Me-Nots
• Love From The North
• A Better Resurrection
• The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness
• Fata Morgana
• One Day
• Introspective
• In The Round Tower At Jhansi
• Memory
• A Birthday
• An Apple Gathering
• Winter: My Secret
• My Friend
• Another Spring
• Up-Hill
• At Home
• To-day and To-morrow
• Yet A Little While
• Goblin Market
• L. E. L
• Spring
• What Good Shall My Life Do Me?
• Cousin Kate
• from The Prince's Progress
• Sister Maude
• 'No, Thank You, John'
• Mirage
• The Lambs Of Grasmere (1860)
• Wife To Husband
• Promises Like Pie-crust
• The Lowest Place
• Song
• The Queen Of Hearts
• A Dumb Friend
• Life And Death
• Somewhere Or Other
• Weary In Well-Doing
• Summer
• What Would I Give!
• Grown And Flown
• Eve
• Shall I Forget?
• Dead Hope
• Enrica
• Italia, Io Ti Saluto
• A Daughter Of Eve
• A Dirge
• 'To-clay For Me'
• A Christmas Carol
• Yet A Little While
• 'I Wish I Could Remember'
• 'Youth Gone, And Beauty Gone'
• The Key-note
• He And She
• A Life's Parallels
• Pastime
• One Sea-side Grave
• 'Bury Hope'
• 'Roses On A Brier'
• 'Heaven's Chimes Are Slow'
• 'A Cold Wind Stirs...'
• 'Lord What Have I To Offer?
• 'The Fields Are White'
• 'Margaret Has A Milking Pail'
• Maude: A Story For Girls