A Birthday
A Birthday
Original Text
Macmillan's Magazine (April 1861). AP 4 M2 ROBA AP M337 MICR mfm. Text from Christina Rossetti, Poems (1890).
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.
Publication Start Year
1861
RPO poem Editors
Margaret Frances (Sister St. Francis) Nims
RPO Edition
3RP 3.304.
Rhyme