Christina Georgina Rossetti: Biography and Analysis of her Poems

Rossetti was born on December 5. 1830, in London, England. She was the youngest daughter of Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian-born poet and scholar who had fled to England in 1824 due to his support for Italian revolutionary nationalism. Her mother, Frances Polidori, was the daughter of another Italian exile Gaetano Polidori. Frances was the sister of John William Polidori who was the friend and physician of the poet Lord Byron. Christina Rossetti's famous brother was the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Christina was to spend most of her life living in London and with the exception of a tour in Normandy in 1861 and a visit to Italy in 1865, she would live a life of quiet devotion to her parents, poetry and religious works.

Rossetti was a devoted Christian and spent a lot of time and energy as a member of the Church of England. Her work consistently conveyed her deep religious sensitivities and pervaded through most of her verse. However, this did not lead to a preaching or moralising front. Neither did she seek to deal with the incredible intellectual and theological difficulties arising from faith in general. Hers was the attitude of a worshipper, plain and simple. The awe and delight she found in God was to become evident as her work progressed.

Her religious convictions were so strong that they led to heartbreak when she rejected the marriage proposal of Charles Cayley because he had reverted back to Roman Catholicism. Her love for him was deep and it was to leave a lasting impact. Another proposed marriage to James Collinson was similarly rejected when he was unable to withstand his conversion to high Anglicanism and he too reverted back to his previous Catholic faith.

Like William Blake, she was able to overturn the complicated and bring them into a simple light for readers to grasp and this was partly what made her so popular. Few poets have been able to convey with equal clearness the reality of things unseen and unheard, by the ordinary senses, as well as Rossetti and Blake. That being said, Christina Rossetti's great talent lay in the actualisation of the natural world's supernaturalism, where Blake's had been the opposite.

Her religious poetry can be summed up by one poem, ''Despised And Rejected'' (see below), which highlights the incredible visualisation of the spiritual tragedy she so describes. The simplicity in which weaves the lines and the ascetic passion shows further her depth of talent and also the lack of comment in regards to the religious individual or to the life of her day that so many poets foraged into.

Rossetti's work focused a great deal on death and the futility of life. Yet whilst one may expect to find her poems unbearably sad and depressing, there was a certain charm to her writing with her subtle feeling of beauty and her almost childlike sense of innocent wonder that balanced out the melancholy. She accepted the pain and sadness in her life, as she found and did not seek to justify the ways of God to mankind.

Christina Rossetti has often been compared to fellow female poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In my view, Rossetti's delicacy and subtle intuition far outweighed that of her contemporary yet she lacks the thrilling human note that Browning so deftly delivered to her poetry. Whilst her emotional power was not lacking for often there were moments of fierce ardour, there is still both a great deal of difference as well as similarity between the two.

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Then I cried out upon him: Cease,
Leave me in peace:
Fear not that I should crave
Aught thou mayst have.
Leave me in peace, yea trouble me no more,
Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.
What, shall I not be let
Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?

But all night long that voice spake urgently:
'Open to Me.'
Still harping in mine ears:
'Rise, let Me in.'
Pleading with tears:
'Open to Me that I may come to thee.'
While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:
'My Feet bleed, see My Face,
See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,
My Heart doth bleed for thee,
Open to Me.'

So till the break of day:
Then died away
That voice, in silence as of sorrow;
Then footsteps echoing like a sigh
Passed me by,
Lingering footsteps slow to pass.
On the morrow
I saw upon the grass
Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door
The mark of blood for evermore.

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In the 1870s, she devoted much of her time working for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge but she was to be particularly affected by the emotional breakdown of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He spent his final years as a withdrawn recluse and drug addiction to chloral hastened his collapse. Dante died on Easter Sunday in 1882. Christina was to spend the next 12 years battling illness herself.

Christina Rossetti died, on December 29. 1894 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. Her last few years had been marked by serious illness and invalidity due to Graves Disease and Cancer. For many decades after her death, Rossetti's poetry remained relatively unnoticed but was revived during the 1970s when feminists took comfort and fortitude from her writing.

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck'd cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; -
All ripe together
In summer weather, -
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy."

Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bow'd her head to hear,
Lizzie veil'd her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.

"Oh," cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."
Lizzie cover'd up her eyes,
Cover'd close lest they should look;
Laura rear'd her glossy head,
And whisper'd like the restless brook:
"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes."
"No," said Lizzie, "No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us."
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat's face,
One whisk'd a tail,
One tramp'd at a rat's pace,
One crawl'd like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl'd obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

The rest can be read here

Individual Poems

~ After Death
~ Another Spring
~ At Home
~ An Echo from Willowwood
~ A Ballad of Boding
~ A Better Resurrection
~ The Convent Threshold
~ Goblin Market
~ Good Friday
~ The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness
~ Maude Clare
~ May
~ An Old World Thicket
~ The Prince's Progress
~ Remember
~ Sapho
~ Spring
~ Song
~ Songs in a Cornfield
~ The Thread of Life
~ Who Shall Deliver Me?

Published Volumes

Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
The Prince's Progress (1866)
Commonplace and Other Stories (1870)
Sing-Song. A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872)
A Pageant and Other Poems (1881)
New Poems (1896)

Photo: Christina Rossetti and her mother, photographed by Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)