A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird
    Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
    Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
    That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
    Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
    Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,
    And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
    In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
    Is come, my love is come to me.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet born on December 5, 1830, and passed away on December 29, 1894. She is best known for her romantic, devotional, and children's poems. Rossetti's works include the famous poem 'Goblin Market' and the Christmas carol 'In the Bleak Midwinter'. A major Victorian poet, her writing often featured themes of love, nature, and spirituality. She was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of its founders.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

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Helen Grey

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

English

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The Birthday

Sweetheart, where all the dancing joys compete
Take now your choice; the world is at your feet,
All turned into a gay and shining pleasance,
And every face has smiles to greet your presence.
    Treading on air,
    Yourself you look more fair;
And the dear Birthday-elves unseen conspire
To flush your cheeks and set your eyes on fire.

Mayhap they whisper what a birthday means
That sets you spinning through your pretty teens.
A slim-grown shape adorned with golden shimmers
Of tossing hair that streams and waves and glimmers,
    Lo, how you run
    In mere excess of fun,
Or change to silence as you stand and hear
Some kind old tale that moves you to a tear.

And, since this is your own bright day, my dear,
Of all the days that gem the sparkling ...

R. C. Lehmann

A Summer Wish

Live all thy sweet life thro',
    Sweet Rose, dew-sprent,
Drop down thine evening dew
To gather it anew
When day is bright:
    I fancy thou wast meant
Chiefly to give delight.

Sing in the silent sky,
    Glad soaring bird;
Sing out thy notes on high
To sunbeam straying by
Or passing cloud;
    Heedless if thou art heard
Sing thy full song aloud.

Oh that it were with me
    As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
    That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.

Oh that my work were done
    As birds' that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
    I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

A Bride Song.

Through the vales to my love!
To the happy small nest of home
Green from basement to roof;
Where the honey-bees come
To the window-sill flowers,
And dive from above,
Safe from the spider that weaves
Her warp and her woof
In some outermost leaves.

Through the vales to my love!
In sweet April hours
All rainbows and showers,
While dove answers dove, -
In beautiful May,
When the orchards are tender
And frothing with flowers, -
In opulent June,
When the wheat stands up slender
By sweet-smelling hay,
And half the sun's splendour
Descends to the moon.

Through the vales to my love!
Where the turf is so soft to the feet,
And the thyme makes it sweet,
And the stately foxglove
Hangs silent its exquisite bells;

Christina Georgina Rossetti

To A Beautiful Child On Her Birthday, With A Wreath Of Flowers.

Whilst others give thee wond'rous toys,
    Or jewels rich and rare,
I bring but flowers - more meet are they
    For one so young and fair.

'Tis not because that snowy brow
    Might with the lily vie,
Or violet match the starry glance
    Of that dark, lustrous eye;

Nor yet because a brighter blush
    E'en rose leaf never wore,
But 'tis that in their leaves lies hid
    A rare and mystic lore.

And with its aid I now shall form
    A wreath of flow'rets wild -
Graceful, and full of meaning sweet,
    To deck thy brow, fair child!

The primrose, first, the emblem fit
    Of budding, early youth;
The daisy in whose leaves we read
    Pure innocence and truth.

The rosebud, sign of youthful charms,
    We wel...

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

L. E. L.

'Whose heart was breaking for a little love.'


Downstairs I laugh, I sport and jest with all;
    But in my solitary room above
I turn my face in silence to the wall;
    My heart is breaking for a little love.
    Though winter frosts are done,
    And birds pair every one,
And leaves peep out, for springtide is begun.

I feel no spring, while spring is wellnigh blown,
    I find no nest, while nests are in the grove:
Woe's me for mine own heart that dwells alone,
    My heart that breaketh for a little love.
    While golden in the sun
    Rivulets rise and run,
While lilies bud, for springtide is begun.

All love, are loved, save only I; their hearts
    Beat warm with love and joy, beat full thereof:
They cannot guess, who play th...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Two Birthdays

Your birthday, sweetheart, is my birthday too,
For, had you not been born,
I who began to live beholding you
Up early as the morn,
That day in June beside the rose-hung stream,
Had never lived at all -
We stood, do you remember? in a dream
There by the water-fall.

You were as still as all the other flowers
Under the morning's spell;
Sudden two lives were one, and all things "ours" -
How we can never tell.
Surely it had been fated long ago -
What else, dear, could we think?
It seemed that we had stood for ever so,
There by the river's brink.

And all the days that followed seemed as days
Lived side by side before,
Strangely familiar all your looks and ways,
The very frock you wore;
Nothing seemed strange, yet all divinely new;

Richard Le Gallienne