Italia, Io Ti Saluto!

To come back from the sweet South, to the North
Where I was born, bred, look to die;
Come back to do my day's work in its day,
Play out my play -
Amen, amen, say I.

To see no more the country half my own,
Nor hear the half familiar speech,
Amen, I say; I turn to that bleak North
Whence I came forth -
The South lies out of reach.

But when our swallows fly back to the South,
To the sweet South, to the sweet South,
The tears may come again into my eyes
On the old wise,
And the sweet name to my mouth.

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

A Bird Song.

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

At Home

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

Maiden-Song

Christina Georgina Rossetti, Simple Poetry

Remember - Sonnet

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.

Enrica, 1865.

She came among us from the South
And made the North her home awhile
Our dimness brightened in her smile,
Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.

We chilled beside her liberal glow,
She dwarfed us by her ampler scale,
Her full-blown blossom made us pale,
She summer-like and we like snow.

We Englishwomen, trim, correct,
All minted in the self-same mould,
Warm-hearted but of semblance cold,
All-courteous out of self-respect.

She woman in her natural grace,
Less trammelled she by lore of school,
Courteous by nature not by rule,
Warm-hearted and of cordial face.

So for awhile she made her home
Among us in the rigid North,
She who from Italy came forth
And scaled the Alps and crossed the foam.

But if she found us like ...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Farewell To Italy

I Leave thee, beauteous Italy! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses            
Bordering the channel of the milky way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poets song.
I did believe (what have I not believd?),            
Weary with age, but unoppressd by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the mimosas shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherishd thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raisd;            
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceasd, when th...

Walter Savage Landor

Wife To Husband

Pardon the faults in me,
    For the love of years ago:
    Good-bye.
I must drift across the sea,
    I must sink into the snow,
    I must die.

You can bask in this sun,
    You can drink wine, and eat:
    Good-bye.
I must gird myself and run,
    Though with unready feet:
    I must die.

Blank sea to sail upon,
    Cold bed to sleep in:
    Good-bye.
While you clasp, I must be gone
    For all your weeping:
    I must die.

A kiss for one friend,
    And a word for two,--
    Good-bye:--
A lock that you must send,
    A kindness you must do:
    I must die.

Not a word for you,
    Not a lock or kiss,
    Good-bye.
We, one, must part in two;
    Verily death is this:
   ...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
    Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
    As sunlight on a stream;
        Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
    Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
    Where thirsting longing eyes
        Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
    My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
        Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Christina Georgina Rossetti

From Sunset To Star Rise.

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 unreturning track.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The Emigrant's Address To America.

All hail to thee, noble and generous Land!
    With thy prairies boundless and wide,
Thy mountains that tower like sentinels grand,
    Thy lakes and thy rivers of pride!

Thy forests that hide in their dim haunted shades
    New flowers of loveliness rare -
Thy fairy like dells and thy bright golden glades,
    Thy warm skies as Italy's fair.

Here Plenty has lovingly smiled on the soil,
    And 'neath her sweet, merciful reign
The brave and long suff'ring children of toil
    Need labor no longer in vain.

I ask of thee shelter from lawless harm,
    Food - raiment - and promise thee now,
In return, the toil of a stalwart arm,
    And the sweat of an honest brow.

But think not, I pray, that this heart is bereft
    Of fond recollect...

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon