Tag: Dante Gabriel Rosetti

We celebrate the life of Christina Rosetti on April 27th every year. This is the anniversary of her first recorded verses (1842) – addressed to her mother. There is a neat conjunction with this celebration and the reading appointed for Morning Prayer – the birth narrative with which Luke begins his gospel.

Christina was the youngest of four children in a very gifted family. She is considered to be one of the finest Victorian poets. One of her poems is treasured by Christians and sung to celebrate Christmas.

The opportunity to give thanks for Christina, and is also opportunity to marvel that a “splash of words” (h/t Mark Oakley and Louis MacNiece) are able to breathe meaning into life and marvel at the one Word which breathed life into meaning. Here is the poem we sing:

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Two poems for which she is particularly remembered for are Goblin Market and Remember.

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the distant land:
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me: you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve;
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rosetti’s work is in the public domain, as is the work of her brother, Dante Gabriel Rosetti.