Bird Or Beast?

Did any bird come flying
    After Adam and Eve,
When the door was shut against them
    And they sat down to grieve?

I think not Eve's peacock
    Splendid to see,
And I think not Adam's eagle;
    But a dove may be.

Did any beast come pushing
    Through the thorny hedge
Into the thorny thistly world,
    Out from Eden's edge?

I think not a lion,
    Though his strength is such;
But an innocent loving lamb
    May have done as much.

If the dove preached from her bough
    and the lamb from his sod,
The lamb and dove
    Were preachers sent from God.

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

Sound Sleep

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

Twice

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

Fata Morgana

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

The Convent Threshold

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Eve

'While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.

'How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.

'Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.

'I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another
Plucked bitterest fruit to gi...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Paradise: In A Symbol

(Lyra Eucharistica, second edition, 1865.)


Golden-winged, silver-winged,
    Winged with flashing flame,
Such a flight of birds I saw,
    Birds without a name:
Singing songs in their own tongue
    (Song of songs) they came.

One to another calling,
    Each answering each,
One to another calling
    In their proper speech:
High above my head they wheeled,
    Far out of reach.

On wings of flame they went and came
    With a cadenced clang,
Their silver wings tinkled,
    Their golden wings rang,
The wind it whistled through their wings
    Where in Heaven they sang.

They flashed and they darted
    Awhile before mine eyes,
Mounting, mounting, mounting still
    In haste to scale the skies -

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The Eagle And Dove.

In search of prey once raised his pinions
An eaglet;
A huntsman's arrow came, and reft
His right wing of all motive power.
Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
For three long days on anguish fed,
In torment writhed
Throughout three long, three weary nights;
And then was cured,
Thanks to all-healing Nature's
Soft, omnipresent balm.
He crept away from out the copse,
And stretch'd his wing alas!
Lost is all power of flight
He scarce can lift himself
From off the ground
To catch some mean, unworthy prey,
And rests, deep-sorrowing,
On the low rock beside the stream.
Up to the oak he looks,
Looks up to heaven,
While in his noble eye there gleams a tear.
Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold,
There comes a wanton pair of...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Symbols

I watched a rosebud very long
    Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
    Waiting to see the perfect flower:
Then, when I thought it should be strong,
    It opened at the matin hour
And fell at evensong.

I watched a nest from day to day,
    A green nest full of pleasant shade,
    Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:
But when they should have hatched in May,
    The two old birds had grown afraid
Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough
    That I had tended so with care,
    Hoping its scent should fill the air;
I crushed the eggs, not heeding how
    Their ancient promise had been fair:
I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,
    And the eggs answered me again:
    Bec...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Poland

Augurs that watched archaic birds
Such plumèd prodigies might read,
The eagles that were double-faced,
The eagle that was black indeed;
And when the battle-birds went down
And in their track the vultures come,
We know what pardon and what peace
Will keep our little masters dumb.

The men that sell what others make,
As vultures eat what others slay,
Will prove in matching plume with plume
That naught is black and all is grey;
Grey as those dingy doves that once,
By money-changers palmed and priced,
Amid the crash of tables flapped
And huddled from the wrath of Christ.

But raised for ever for a sign
Since God made anger glorious,
Where eagles black and vultures grey
Flocked back about the heroic house,
Where war is holier than peac...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A Fable.

        Some cawing Crows, a hooting Owl,
        A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl,
    One day all meet together
        To hold a caucus and settle the fate
        Of a certain bird (without a mate),
    A bird of another feather.

        "My friends," said the Owl, with a look most wise,
        "The Eagle is soaring too near the skies,
    In a way that is quite improper;
        Yet the world is praising her, so I'm told,
        And I think her actions have grown so bold
    That some of us ought to stop her."

        "I have heard it said," quoth Hawk, with a sigh,
        "That young lambs died at the glance of her eye,
    And I wholly scorn and despise her.
        This, and more, I am told they say,
        And I think that the only ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox