Christina Rossetti (1830–94,) fully Christina Georgina Rossetti, was a leading Victorian Pre-Raphaelite woman poet. She wrote poems of love, fantasy, and nature, verses for children, and devotional poetry and prose.
Born in London, Rossetti had her grandfather print her pamphlet before she was in her teens. Her earliest lyrics were published in the first issue of the literary magazine The Germ (1850) under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne.
Influenced by the Oxford Movement, Rossetti wrote abundant religious poetry reflecting her High Anglican faith, although she also wrote love poetry and children’s verse. Her notable works include Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862,) The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866,) and Sing Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872.)
Rossetti’s later works include A Pageant and Other Poems (1881,) Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885,) and The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (1892.)
Rossetti was a sister of the poet and illustrator Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the critic William Michael Rossetti.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Christina Rossetti
She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Religion
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Snow
Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Love
Spring is when life’s alive in everything.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Seasons
A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Self-Discovery
Silence is more musical than any song.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: One liners, Silence
Christmas hath a beauty … lovelier than the world can show.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Christmas
Love is like a rose,
the joy of all the earth…
Love is like a lovely rose,
the world’s delight.
—Christina Rossetti
Hope is like a hairball trembling from its birth…
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Hope
Be the green grass above me, with showers and dewdrops wet; and if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Dying, Death
Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Smile, Regret, Past, Reflection
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Hope
Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts, nd no one to thank.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: God
For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather.
—Christina Rossetti
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Family, Friendship, Weather
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit…
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Heart
For one man is my world of all the men this wide world holds; O love, my world is you.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: World
Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Weather
Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes; work never begun.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Secrets of Success
And all the winds go sighing, for sweet things dying.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Death, Dying
I dream of you to wake; would that I might Dream of you and not wake but slumber on…
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Dreams
I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you’d say, Where? What? and turn away.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Facts
Love came down at Christmas;
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Christmas
Obedience is the fruit of faith.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Dedication
Come to me in the silence of the night,
Come to me in the speaking silence of a dream.
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream.
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
—Christina Rossetti
Topics: Memory
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