Victorian Poet: Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)

“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             5

  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;                    10

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,                    15

  And haply may forget.

“In an Artist’s Studio”

One face looks out from all his canvases,

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:

We found her hidden just behind those screens,

That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

A queen in opal or in ruby dress,

A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,

A saint, an angel -- every canvas means

The same one meaning, neither more nor less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,

And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.