Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was the most influential poet of the Victorian era. ThePre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel was her elder brother. Never married and lived with her mother , as a younger girl , she dictated to her mother first poem : “Cecilia never went to school / Without her gladiator.” : : ‘Goblin Market and Other Poems’was her first publication.The title poem is a long narrative poem which is often taken for a children’s poem because of its fairy-tale motifs and imagery. ‘Remember’ and ‘When I am dead, my dearest’ and few others were composed before she had turnedtwenty. Good Friday’ such other poems were religious poems; about honest religious doubt as much as faith; and ‘Twice’, about the importance of Christian forgiveness and redemption (the poem is spoken by a fallen woman, a theme that can also be seen in ‘Goblin Market’) : : She wrote: sonnets, ballads, narrative poems, lyrics, even Christmas carols (‘In the Bleak Midwinter’) The Penguin edition of her Complete Poems runs to well over 1,000 pages.Her poetic influence was upon a range of later poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ford Madox Ford, and Elizabeth Jennings. Philips Larkin praised her ‘steely stoicism’. Christina wrote many sonnets ( Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, rhymed abbabbacdcede), including the classic ‘Remember’ (written when she was still a teenager), and mastered the form from a young age. Rossetti died in 1894 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery where fellow Victorian writer George Eliot had earlier been laidto rest.
From Sunset to Star Rise:Christina Rossetti Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, A silly sheep benighted from the fold, A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, I live alone, I look to die alone: Yet sometimes when a wind sighs through the sedge, Ghosts of my buried years and friends come back, My heart goes sighing after swallows flown On sometime summer’s unreturningtrack.
Here, A woman speaks who has chosen to shunning herself from society and her friends. ‘From Sunset to Star Rise’ uses autumny and the disappearing summer to reflect on fall and sin as part of human nature. The closing line of its couplet, ” On sometime summer’s unreturning track”, appears with a pensive sadness representing the sense of ‘slip away’. Although not the best ofher sonnets , “From Sunset To Star Rise”is a real gem of a poem. : : : :
Notes for each of the 14 lines Pending visit this post again later on to enjoy the appreciation of the poem. : : Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India October 6 , 2022 : :
MADHU MALTI 