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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Sunday, December 07, 2003
   
   

Blog Stuff

As I hope you'll notice, I've added archive links to the bottom of each entry on the main page, to the individual entry archives, and to the daily archives: links to the category index, the daily archive, the week's index, and the month's index. I hope, Faithful Reader, that you will (eventually?) find them to be useful. More plans are aborning for changes to the category, weekly, and monthly indexes: I think we need more than just the title and date/time.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 12/07/03 02:20:22 PM
Categorized as Other.


   
   

Three by Rossetti

Poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Dead Before Death

Ah! changed and cold, how changed and very cold!
   With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes:
   Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise;
This was the promise of the days of old!
Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould,
   Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies:
   We hoped for better things as years would rise,
But it is as over as a tale once told.
All fallen the blossom that no fruitage once bore,
   All lost the present and the future time,
All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before:
So lost till death shut-to the opened door,
   So lost from chime to everlasting chime,
So cold and lost for ever evermore.

(1854)

Winter: My Secret

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to every one who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave that truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

(1857)

In Progress

Ten years ago it seemed impossible
   That she could ever grow as calm as this,
   With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss
And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
Slow-speaking when she has some fact to tell,
   Silent with long-unbroken silences,
   Centred in self yet not unpleased to please,
Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.
Mindful of drudging daily common things,
   Patient at pastime, patient at her work,
      Wearied perhaps but strenuous certainly.
      Sometimes I fancy we may one day see
   Her head shoot forth seven stars from where they lurk
And her eyes lightning and her shoulders wings.

(1862)

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors (sixth edition), ed. M.H. Abrams et al., pp. 2106, 2108f, 2123.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 12/07/03 02:12:54 PM
Categorized as Sunday Poetry Series.


   

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