Quotes by Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads. The wind is passing by.

Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time. Oh violets for the grave of youth, And bay for those dead in their prime; Give me the withered leaves I chose Before in the old time.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.

Endure Hardness A cold wind stirs the blackthorn To burgeon and to blow, Besprinkling half-green hedges With flakes and sprays of snow. Through coldness and through keenness, Dear hearts, take comfort so: Somewhere or other doubtless These make the blackthorn blow.

Echo Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years. Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death: Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago.

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me: Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet: And if thou wilt, remember And if thou wilt, forget.

The Bourne Underneath the growing grass, Underneath the living flowers, Deeper than the sound of showers: There we shall not count the hours By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Beauty reckoned of no worth: There a very little girth Can hold round what once the earth Seemed too narrow to contain.

A Birthday My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set 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.

A Frog's Fate . . . . O rich and poor, O great and small, Such oversights beset us all. The mangled Frog abides incog, The uninteresting actual frog: The hypothetic frog alone Is the one frog we dwell upon.