A Birthday

by CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894)

Read by Leonard Wilson for Librivox

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Youngest child of an Italian father, Gabriele, and Italian/English mother, Frances (Polidori), Christina was born on December 5, 1830 in London, England, where she would spend most of her life. continued

Christina Rossetti Contemporaries
Emily Dickinson
William Allingham
Lewis Carroll
Ethel Lynn Beers