Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
A Birthday
1My heart is like a singing bird
2 Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
3My heart is like an apple-tree
4 Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
5My heart is like a rainbow shell
6 That paddles in a halcyon sea;
7My heart is gladder than all these
8 Because my love is come to me.
9Raise me a dais of silk and down;
10 Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
11Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
12 And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
13Work it in gold and silver grapes,
14 In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
15Because the birthday of my life
16 Is come, my love is come to me.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Macmillan's Magazine (April 1861). AP 4 M2 ROBA AP M337 MICR mfm. Text from Christina Rossetti, Poems (1890).
First publication date:
1861
RPO poem editor: Margaret Frances (Sister St. Francis) Nims
RP edition: 3RP 3.304.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/14
Composition date:
November
1857
Rhyme: abcbdefe
Other poems by Christina Rossetti
