The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti

I am acknowledgedly poor;
Yet my resources are no fewer
Than all the trades-there is not one
But I profess, beneath the sun.
I bear a part in many a game;
My worth may change, I am the same:
Sometimes, by you expelled, I roam
Forth from the sanctuary of home.

Me you often meet

In London's crowded street, And merry children's voices my resting-place proclaim.

Pictures and prose and verse
Compose me—I rehearse

Evil and good and folly, and call each by its name.

I make men glad, and I
Can bid their senses fly,

And festive echoes know me of Isis and of Cam.

But give me to a friend,

And amity will end,

Though he may have the temper and meekness of a lamb.

And touched me clammily. I could not pick

A quarrel with it: it began to lick My hand, making meanwhile a piteous din,

And shedding human tears: it would begin

To near me, then retreat. I heard the quick

Pulsation of my heart, I marked the fight

Of life and death within me.

Then sleep threw

Her veil around me; but this thing is true.

When I awoke the sun was at his

height;

And I wept sadly, knowing that

one new

Creature had love for me, and others spite.

24 September 1849.

PORTRAITS

AN easy lazy length of limb,
Dark eyes and features from the
South,

A short-legged meditative pipe
Set in a supercilious mouth :
Ink and a pen and papers laid
Down on a table for the night,
Beside a semi-dozing man

Who wakes to go to bed by light.

A pair of brothers brotherly,

Unlike and yet how much the

same

In heart and high-toned intellect,

In face and bearing, hope and

aim:

Friends of the selfsame treasured friends

And of one home the dear delight, Beloved of many a loving heart, And cherished both in mine, Good-night.

9 May 1853.

CHARON

IN my cottage near the Styx
Co. and Charon still combine
Us to ferry o'er like bricks
In a boat of chaste design.
Cerberus, thou triple fair,
Distance doth thy charms impair :

Let the passage give to us
Charon, Co., and Cerberus

CHORUS

Now the passage gives us to Charon, Cerberus, and Co. June 1853-Frome Selwood.

THE P.R.B.

THE two Rossettis (brothers they)
And Holman Hunt and John Millais,
With Stephens chivalrous and bland,
And Woolner in a distant land-
In these six men I awestruck see
Embodied the great P.R.B.
D. G. Rossetti offered two
Good pictures to the public view;
Unnumbered ones great John Millais,
And Holman more than I can say.

William Rossetti, calm and solemn,
Cuts up his brethren by the column.
19 September 1853.

THE P.R.B. is in its decadence : For Woolner in Australia cooks his chops,

And Hunt is yearning for the land of Cheops;

D. G. Rossetti shuns the vulgar
optic ;
While William M. Rossetti merely
lops

His B's in English disesteemed
as Coptic ;

Calm Stephens in the twilight

smokes his pipe,

And he at last the champion

great Millais,

Attaining academic opulence,

Winds up his signature with
A.R.A.

So rivers merge in the perpetual

sea;

So luscious fruit must fall when over

ripe;

And so the consummated P. R.B. 10 November 1853.

CHILD'S TALK IN APRIL

I WISH you were a pleasant wren,

And I your small accepted mate; How we'd look down on toilsome men!

We'd rise and go to bed at eight
Or it may be not quite so late.

Then you should see the nest I'd
build,

The wondrous nest for you and

me;

The outside rough perhaps, but filled

With wool and down; ah you should see

The cosy nest that it would be.

We'd have our change of hope and fear,

Small quarrels, reconcilements

sweet:

I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer,
Or hop about on active feet,
And fetch you dainty bits to eat.
We'd be so happy by the day,
So safe and happy through the
night,

But long the dawning of his We both should feel, and I should