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A Birthday

Rossetti, Christina (1830 - 1894)

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: 
abcbdefe