A portrait of Christina Rossetti (Image found Rossetti Archive)
Today I got acquainted with Christina Rossetti's poems and I loved it! I'm not overly fond of poetry overall, though I do have my favorite poets (Poe, Mary Oliver and Álvares de Azevedo to name a few), but Rossetti has a style that is both sweet and unique... And she speaks about fairies and goblins, so I'm bound to like her!
Christina was a Victorian poet and her poems never dissappeared from view - which is rare for a woman poet from that period. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a resurgence largely caused by the emergence of feminist criticism. Along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she is considered the greatest female poet of her era. She was the youngest child in an very gifted family of Italian descent, who lived in England.
Check out one of her many poems:
Aloof
"The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me:
-- Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? What hand thy hand?
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek,
And all the world and I seem'd much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak"
Christina was a Victorian poet and her poems never dissappeared from view - which is rare for a woman poet from that period. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a resurgence largely caused by the emergence of feminist criticism. Along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she is considered the greatest female poet of her era. She was the youngest child in an very gifted family of Italian descent, who lived in England.
Check out one of her many poems:
Aloof
"The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me:
-- Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? What hand thy hand?
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek,
And all the world and I seem'd much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak"
~Ally
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