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Rossetti: Poems
These Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover editions are popular for their compact size and reasonable price which do not compromise content. Poems: Rossetti contains a full selection of Rossetti's work, including her lyric poems, dramatic and narrative poems, rhymes and riddles, sonnet sequences, prayers and meditations, and an index of first lines.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 1993
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About the author
Christina Rossetti
336 books559 followersChristina Georgina Rossetti, sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, wrote lyrical religious works and ballads, such as "Up-hill" (1861).
Frances Polidori Rossetti bore this most important women poet writing in nineteenth-century England to Gabriele Rossetti. Despite her fundamentally religious temperament, closer to that of her mother, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.
Dante made seemingly quite attractive if not beautiful but somewhat idealized sketches of Christina as a teenager. In 1848, James Collinson, one of the minor pre-Raphaelite brethren, engaged her but reverted to Roman Catholicism and afterward ended the engagement.
When failing health and eyesight forced the professor into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother started a day school, attempting to support the family, but after a year or so, gave it away. Thereafter, a recurring illness, diagnosed as sometimes angina and sometimes tuberculosis, interrupted a very retiring life that she led. From the early 1860s, she in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother William, refused to marry him because "she enquired into his creed and found he was not a Christian." Milk-and-water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer argues that her poems conceal a love for the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no other evidence for this theory, and the most respected scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more revealing poems were written.
All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical branch of the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They nevertheless retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican nun, and Christina's religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch : as Eliot's heroine looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed it so much, so Christina gave up chess because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted paper strips over the antireligious parts of Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (which allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to nudity in painting, especially if the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner's Parsifal, because it celebrated a pagan mythology.
After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer, Christina (like many Victorian spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty much a stay-at-home, her circle included her brothers' friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by neuralgia and emotionally by Dante's breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life, after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She died of cancer.
Frances Polidori Rossetti bore this most important women poet writing in nineteenth-century England to Gabriele Rossetti. Despite her fundamentally religious temperament, closer to that of her mother, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.
Dante made seemingly quite attractive if not beautiful but somewhat idealized sketches of Christina as a teenager. In 1848, James Collinson, one of the minor pre-Raphaelite brethren, engaged her but reverted to Roman Catholicism and afterward ended the engagement.
When failing health and eyesight forced the professor into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother started a day school, attempting to support the family, but after a year or so, gave it away. Thereafter, a recurring illness, diagnosed as sometimes angina and sometimes tuberculosis, interrupted a very retiring life that she led. From the early 1860s, she in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother William, refused to marry him because "she enquired into his creed and found he was not a Christian." Milk-and-water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer argues that her poems conceal a love for the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no other evidence for this theory, and the most respected scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more revealing poems were written.
All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical branch of the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They nevertheless retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican nun, and Christina's religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch : as Eliot's heroine looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed it so much, so Christina gave up chess because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted paper strips over the antireligious parts of Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (which allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to nudity in painting, especially if the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner's Parsifal, because it celebrated a pagan mythology.
After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer, Christina (like many Victorian spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty much a stay-at-home, her circle included her brothers' friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by neuralgia and emotionally by Dante's breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life, after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She died of cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
February 22, 2015
Baigais emo.
Goblin Market bija episks un skaists, bet viss pārējais smaržoja pēc asarām, trūdzemes, vītušām puķēm un pret klintīm sašķaidītām cerībām.
Goblin Market bija episks un skaists, bet viss pārējais smaržoja pēc asarām, trūdzemes, vītušām puķēm un pret klintīm sašķaidītām cerībām.
December 25, 2024
3.5
This is my first time reading Rossetti (besides Goblin Market) and though I don't usually enjoy consuming large amounts of poetry about nature, the seasons, and love (I get bored), Rossetti is undeniably talented. A large portion of this collection was her Christian poems, which I wasn't expecting but appreciated. Worth reading.
This is my first time reading Rossetti (besides Goblin Market) and though I don't usually enjoy consuming large amounts of poetry about nature, the seasons, and love (I get bored), Rossetti is undeniably talented. A large portion of this collection was her Christian poems, which I wasn't expecting but appreciated. Worth reading.
November 8, 2020
This is my first time reading the poetry of Christina Rossetti, but it will definitely not be my last. Her poetry is amazing and she is gifted at evoking images with her words. Some of my favorites are as follows,
In her lyric poems, An Echo from Willowwood, Remember
In Dramatic and Narrative poem it is hard to choose as I devoured them all but to mention a few, Goblin Market, The Ghost Petition, Helen Grey, Eve.
Rhymes and Riddles was a humorous section my favorites are, A City Plum, Hope, How Many Seconds, and Jewels.
The Sonnets sections and Prayers and Meditations contain so many wonderful gems I refuse to choose between them.
Poetry is a treat to read as it opens up not only your mind to new ideas but also your heart to new emotions.
Please try this wonderful author from the past you will fall in love with her work as I did.
In her lyric poems, An Echo from Willowwood, Remember
In Dramatic and Narrative poem it is hard to choose as I devoured them all but to mention a few, Goblin Market, The Ghost Petition, Helen Grey, Eve.
Rhymes and Riddles was a humorous section my favorites are, A City Plum, Hope, How Many Seconds, and Jewels.
The Sonnets sections and Prayers and Meditations contain so many wonderful gems I refuse to choose between them.
Poetry is a treat to read as it opens up not only your mind to new ideas but also your heart to new emotions.
Please try this wonderful author from the past you will fall in love with her work as I did.
June 27, 2020
I got more out of this collection than many other poetry collections I've read - Rossetti has definitely penned some gems. I like that this collection features different types of poems and gives a nice overview of Rossetti's styles. And even though I didn't like all of the poems, I quite enjoyed reading this collection and would recommend it.
October 30, 2015
This little volume of Christina Rossetti's poetry is simply sublime! While it is not a complete collection of her beautiful poetry, it does contain some examples of her finest work. Of course it contains the thought-provoking epic poem, "Goblin Market." Some of my other personal favorites include: "An Echo from Willowwood," "Song," "After Death," "The Ghost's Petition;" and one of her very best, in my opinion, "The Convent Threshold."
Christina Rossetti was the younger sister of the talented Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In comparing their poetry though, it is my learned opinion that Christina was far-and-away the master. In fact, of all the great Victorian Era poets, I think a case can be made that she was only equaled by some of the poetic works of Tennyson, the Brownings, and Dickinson in America . I highly recommend this volume of Christina Rossetti's poetry. You will find yourself returning to it time and again.
Christina Rossetti was the younger sister of the talented Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In comparing their poetry though, it is my learned opinion that Christina was far-and-away the master. In fact, of all the great Victorian Era poets, I think a case can be made that she was only equaled by some of the poetic works of Tennyson, the Brownings, and Dickinson in America . I highly recommend this volume of Christina Rossetti's poetry. You will find yourself returning to it time and again.
January 13, 2023
Tread softly! all the earth is holy ground.
It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,
this spot we stand on is a Paradise.
This is the only "proper" poetry collection I read this year and from that point of view, it's a little bit disappointing... (I also read Marie de France: Poetry which I loved, but that's epic poetry, so... not really what I think of when talking about poetry...)
I'm going to do this one in points to keep my thoughts straight (ha ha).
1. I read a big chunk of this collection when I was going through a rougher patch... I don't really want to get into it, since it has nothing to do with this book, but... it was a time I needed to see and experience beautiful things and for that time, this book was it.
(If you are interested in the source of my distress at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Br...)
Passing away the bliss,
the anguish passing away:
Thus it is
Today.
Clean past away the sorrow,
the pleasure brought back to stay:
Thus and this
Tomorrow.
2. Something about the physical execution of my edition is highly pleasing to me. Just holding the book in my hands feels so nice. BUT I have to say... there are no additional materials in this collection. None, no foreword, no notes... this might work for some, but certainly not for me. In some of the poems it doesn't really matter, but lot of them felt highly personal, maybe partly biographical and I would just love to get some context...
This also goes for the questions I have about the gender relations in this book... like, possibly interesting, but without any context it's hard to know - I'm especially talking about the sonnets now.
"Vien dietro a me e lascia dir le genti."--Dante.
"Contando i casi della vita nostra."--Petrarca.
Many in aftertimes will say of you
"He loved her"--while of me what will they say?
Not that I loved you more than just in play,
For fashion's sake as idle women do.
Even let them prate; who know not what we knew
Of love and parting in exceeding pain,
Of parting hopeless here to meet again,
Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view.
But by my heart of love laid bare to you,
My love that you can make not void nor vain,
Love that foregoes you but to claim anew
Beyond this passage of the gate of death,
I charge you at the Judgment make it plain
My love of you was life and not a breath.
3. I picked this book up mainly for Goblin Market and that one was so interesting. The tale might be moral, but... the tangible eroticism is real... and it's overall a really interesting piece of literature, I sure need/want to re-read that one... (An antisemitic reading of this piece is possible, I don't really have my own opinion on this yet, but... just so you know...)
Overall, I guess that the Everyman collection won't work for me, even though I love their visual execution. I need notes in my books... Especially in older books... I'm intrigued by Rossetti, I definitely want to investigate some more into Goblin Market and am not yet sure if I want to read something else by her... but I'm not ruling out the possibility...
May 21, 2021
The last part was too religious for my personal preference, but the rest of Rossetti's poems are wonderful. I've loved her since I studied Goblin Market in school and I think the way she wrote was lovely and skilful.
September 24, 2011
I suspect Rossetti and I would not have gotten along had we chanced to meet at a cocktail party. In fact, I get the feeling I might have faked a heart attack/stroke/labor pains to get away from her drearily repetitious piety. Her verses are beautifully rendered - tightly constructed and lovingly metered - yet by and large wildly uninteresting(at least to me). Given that a chunk of them coolly address unrequited love, one can't help but picture her crouched over a page, counting off beats on her fingers, and using each dryish syllable to further button down her heart. Possibly due to Rossetti's general fame, Everyman chose to forego an introduction or biographical sketch of any kind, a choice I always tend to view as an error. A very obviously talented woman... but I'd rather hang with (and read) Dorothy Parker.
August 21, 2009
I love the books of poetry from this series and I love Christina Rossetti. I carry these small books everywhere and this is definitely one of my favorites.
January 12, 2023
Beautiful book and I am so glad that I have the chance to read it.
April 29, 2019
CHRIST THIS POETRY IS BORING. I had my suspicions about ‘Birthday’ because, while it’s a lovely poem, it’s a bit awkwardly constructed, and certainly has a tinge of mawkishness. Well, try 248 pages of her. Awkward and mawkish about covers it. I don’t think I’ve liked any collection less, with the possible exception of Anne Sexton.
There is a Budding Morrow in Midnight
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.
The Thread of Life:
He bids me sing: O death, where is thy sting?
And sing: O grave, where is thy victory?
Strange Voices:
what is it severeth
Us from the spirits that we would be with?
Or is it that our fleshly ear is dull,
And our own shadow hides light with a mask?
I Cannot Plead:
O Lord, I cannot plead of my love of Thee;
I plead Thy love of me –
The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.
Fundamentally this chick is obsessed with Jesus, angels, and death, and I don’t share any of those obsessions. It got to the point where I felt like I was reading the diary of a cult initiate right up to the point where they commit mass suicide. I can take a little bit of god in my pre-twentieth century poets, but this is all god, all the time. She’s the poetic equivalent of an American tele-evangelist channel. I'm not here for it.
Favourites: Will you be there?; Remember (tends to be read at funerals a lot, I find, for good reason); Pastime; Cardinal Newman; No, thank you, John; The Frog.
There is a Budding Morrow in Midnight
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.
The Thread of Life:
He bids me sing: O death, where is thy sting?
And sing: O grave, where is thy victory?
Strange Voices:
what is it severeth
Us from the spirits that we would be with?
Or is it that our fleshly ear is dull,
And our own shadow hides light with a mask?
I Cannot Plead:
O Lord, I cannot plead of my love of Thee;
I plead Thy love of me –
The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.
Fundamentally this chick is obsessed with Jesus, angels, and death, and I don’t share any of those obsessions. It got to the point where I felt like I was reading the diary of a cult initiate right up to the point where they commit mass suicide. I can take a little bit of god in my pre-twentieth century poets, but this is all god, all the time. She’s the poetic equivalent of an American tele-evangelist channel. I'm not here for it.
Favourites: Will you be there?; Remember (tends to be read at funerals a lot, I find, for good reason); Pastime; Cardinal Newman; No, thank you, John; The Frog.
April 15, 2018
This book would be improved a great deal if it were shorter and more poorly organised. Its primary defect is that long strings of the poems make up a chorus of crushing emotional monotone.
Many of the lyric poems are good, but they would be seen to better effect if encountered 'in the wild' surrounded by at least slightly differently toned poems.
Rossetti had some commonly held emotions over her lifetime, but at least when she was feeling them she didn't have to feel them in Huge. Single. Unitary. Blocks. Which is how we have to fucking read them here.
She drones on. There are too many tepid and boring Lyric poems and too many prayers. God may be pleased but I am not. There is also a crushingly terrible piercingly wan and cuttingly wet love-sonnet sequence.
The collection is saved by those poems which are specific, imaginative, full of darkness and Holy Doom, a really excellent section on rhymes and riddles and one work of unquestionable genius - Goblin Market.
Rossetti is a very good poet, but she is so much better when being simple, and so much better when being short. One of few poets who would benefit from being born later on, since the glib, modern and murderous 20th Century would abrade a lot of her more tiresome qualities.
Many of the lyric poems are good, but they would be seen to better effect if encountered 'in the wild' surrounded by at least slightly differently toned poems.
Rossetti had some commonly held emotions over her lifetime, but at least when she was feeling them she didn't have to feel them in Huge. Single. Unitary. Blocks. Which is how we have to fucking read them here.
She drones on. There are too many tepid and boring Lyric poems and too many prayers. God may be pleased but I am not. There is also a crushingly terrible piercingly wan and cuttingly wet love-sonnet sequence.
The collection is saved by those poems which are specific, imaginative, full of darkness and Holy Doom, a really excellent section on rhymes and riddles and one work of unquestionable genius - Goblin Market.
Rossetti is a very good poet, but she is so much better when being simple, and so much better when being short. One of few poets who would benefit from being born later on, since the glib, modern and murderous 20th Century would abrade a lot of her more tiresome qualities.
December 10, 2018
I've been waiting to read Rossetti for so long; it was so disappointing to read her at least and realize that I absolutely hate her poetry.
Technically it's well written. The metre, rhyme, metaphor, analogy, language--all of that is perfection.
But her poems are mawkish, morbid, and obsessed with jesus, heaven, death, and female purity. If I never in the rest of my life read a poem about how earth is a vale of tears but one day we will finally die and join jesus in heaven for blissful ever, it will be too soon.
I enjoyed Goblin Market, obsessed with female purity as it was and too long by half; and there were one or two other poems about seasons and nature I enjoyed. And that was it.
I know how much she means to many other readers. But the themes of her work make it completely inaccessible to me.
Technically it's well written. The metre, rhyme, metaphor, analogy, language--all of that is perfection.
But her poems are mawkish, morbid, and obsessed with jesus, heaven, death, and female purity. If I never in the rest of my life read a poem about how earth is a vale of tears but one day we will finally die and join jesus in heaven for blissful ever, it will be too soon.
I enjoyed Goblin Market, obsessed with female purity as it was and too long by half; and there were one or two other poems about seasons and nature I enjoyed. And that was it.
I know how much she means to many other readers. But the themes of her work make it completely inaccessible to me.
May 27, 2017
Rossetti is easily one of my favorite poets- charming, smart, and timeless! My favorite section in this volume is "Rhymes and Riddles," which provided many laughs. The only complaint I have is that some of her trademark lyric poems, such as "Apple Gathering" and "Sister Maude" were not included; the volume seemed to emphasize her more religious-themed sonnets and meditations instead. While these works were charming and beautifully written, they became pretty repetitive after a few pages... This book is an excellent introduction to her work, but if you are more interested in her lyric works, you may want to find another selection.
December 21, 2023
I don't know if it's necessarily fair to say that Rossetti is underappreciated, but I'm not sure if she's often given her proper due as one of the finest English lyric poets. Truth be told, her subject matters and general style are not terribly individual, but she has the musical ear and the rich reserves of passion. No word seems out of place or insincere. This is maybe one of the first collections I would recommend to someone new to poetry, particularly Christians, as the devotional pieces are mostly lovely (if a tad blunt and trite at times). "The Convent Threshold" is one of my favorite among all lesser-known poems. And "Goblin Market" is off-the-charts weird, but compelling.
August 7, 2017
So prim, so pious, so playful and morbid.
[Song]
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With shows and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
December 17, 2023
I really love many of Rossetti's poems, and this is a lovely little book, so I felt eager to read through the poems one or two each morning. Somehow the selection of poems or organization of the book or something just didn't connect as well for me and started to feel like a bit of a slog, at times. I'm fully admitting this could absolutely just have been the season and state I am in as a reader because I generally find Rossetti's work very enjoyable and felt surprised not to enjoy it more.
January 1, 2023
A beautiful collection of poetry. What took me most is the modern tone to so many of the poems, the agency, anger and complex feeling that she brings to her works. My favourite poems which I felt really leant into this feeling of female rage or a modern tone were ‘A Prodigal Son’ (preraphaelite era daddy issues poem, very relatable) and ‘No Thank You John’.
May 10, 2024
3.5 stars
I mainly knew Rossetti from the famous Goblin Market poem, which is included in this volume, but was not familiar with most of her shorter verse.
I also did not realize "In the Bleak Midwinter" was taken from her verse!
I mainly knew Rossetti from the famous Goblin Market poem, which is included in this volume, but was not familiar with most of her shorter verse.
I also did not realize "In the Bleak Midwinter" was taken from her verse!
July 20, 2025
Such a beautiful collection of poems! I have struggled with getting through volumes of poetry in the past, but Rosetti speaks in a way my heart deeply knows and understands. Several of the poems found in the books will stick with me for years to come, I hope.
May 5, 2019
Rossetti’s poetry really is beautiful. I enjoyed her dramatic and narrative poems as well as her rhymes and riddles. Her prayers I could do without.
June 17, 2019
I loved Goblin Market and her narrative poems. But the majority were too religious and Jesus based for my taste.
March 6, 2020
Goblin Market is the gem, but the lyrics and the riddle poems are great too.
December 24, 2020
Read this while standing in line, waiting to cast my vote in the 2020 elections.
May 8, 2023
I skipped the religious and children's poetry because I'm not in the mood for that but the rest were beautiful. I did miss having notes and bibliographic details to accompany the poems.
September 3, 2024
Such an unexpected masterpiece
December 16, 2021
The wanna-be goth in me was a huge fan of the lyric poems (largely dwelling on mortality).
It was really fun to read the dramatic/narrative poems - it's been a while since I'd read 'Goblin Market' and my inner fantasist was very at home there!
Rhymes and Riddles were altogether different in tone - somewhat more innocent and optimistic. For me, they were growers. 'The Frog', towards the end of the section, was a win for me (as a vegan).
The sonnets, prayers and meditations lost me a little - the sonnets seemed at first a feminist spin but (on my first reading anyway) were a bit conventional and although this atheist has been known to enjoy some religious works ('Paradise Lost' being my sole reason for being at 19), Rossetti's didn't really do it for me. I suppose there wasn't enough tension or strange medieval mythology woven in to hook me.
She has quite an impressive range of poetry so there's probably something for all tastes within the collection.
It was really fun to read the dramatic/narrative poems - it's been a while since I'd read 'Goblin Market' and my inner fantasist was very at home there!
Rhymes and Riddles were altogether different in tone - somewhat more innocent and optimistic. For me, they were growers. 'The Frog', towards the end of the section, was a win for me (as a vegan).
The sonnets, prayers and meditations lost me a little - the sonnets seemed at first a feminist spin but (on my first reading anyway) were a bit conventional and although this atheist has been known to enjoy some religious works ('Paradise Lost' being my sole reason for being at 19), Rossetti's didn't really do it for me. I suppose there wasn't enough tension or strange medieval mythology woven in to hook me.
She has quite an impressive range of poetry so there's probably something for all tastes within the collection.
September 27, 2021
NPR 100 best Horror: "The Goblin Market"
April 16, 2015
What a perfect way to celebrate National Poetry Month. Rossetti's poetry is full of passion and seems to resonate with me on many levels. I wish I had a fraction of her talent with words
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews