Six Poems

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was a fringe member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a mid-nineteenth-century group of British painters and poets. Her poetry is exquisite, technically brilliant and emotionally wide-ranging. She wrote extended works of fantasy such as ‘Goblin Market’ but also short, elegiac poems about the pain of love, separation or death. She has always had a devoted following, and rightly so.

Song
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Contents

Song
The First Spring Day
May
Up-Hill
Remember
Goblin Market