Selected Poems

by Christina Rossetti, Dinah Roe (Editor), Dinah Roe (Introduction), Dinah Roe (Noted by)

Overview

A captivating selection of enduring verse by one of the Victorian era's most beloved poets

Christina Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse forms. Weaving connections between love and death, triumph and loss, heavenly joys and earthly pleasures, Rossetti's poems startle the imagination with their extraordinary truth, beauty, and intensity. This first fully annotated collection, based on the definitive texts, brings together love lyrics, sonnets, hymns, ballads, the vast body of her devotional poetry, and fantasy poems like Goblin Market, Rossetti's terrifyingly vivid verses for children.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140424690
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/24/2008
Series:	Penguin Classics
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), sister of the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was educated at home and shared her family's intellectual interests. Ill-health ended her work as a governess and later made her an invalid. Her poetry was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite magazine, The Germ, and several volumes of poetry followed, demonstrating an extraordinary emotional and technical range.

Table of Contents

Introduction Couplet; Mary Magdalene; Spring Quiet; Song; Bitter for Sweet; Three Stages 1. A Pause of Thought 2. The End of the First Part 3. . . . .; One Certainty ;Two Pursuits; A Testimony; Song; After Death; Looking Forward Remember; Seeking Rest; A Portrait; Endurance; Withering Twilight Calm; Two Thoughts of Death; Is and Was; The Three Enemies The Flesh The World The Devil ; The Summer is Ended; From the Antique; For Rosaline's Album; Next of Kin; A Pause; Holy Innocents; A Wish; Seasons; Ballad; From the Antique; Listening; Echo; The First Spring Day; My Dream; The Last Look; May; Old and New Year Ditties; Shut Out; A Chilly Night; In the Lane; A Bed of Forget-Me-Nots; Love from the North; A Better Resurrection; The Heart Knoweth its Own Bitterness; Fata Morgana; One Day; Introspective; In the Round Tower at Jhansi; Memory; A Birthday; An Apple Gathering; Winter: My Secret; My Friend; Another Spring; Up-Hill; At home; To-day and To-Morrow; Yet a Little While; Goblin Market; L. E. L.; Spring; What Good Shall My Life Do Me?; Cousin Kate; from The Prince's Progress; Sister Maude; 'No Thank You John'; Mirage; The Lambs of Grasmere; Wife to Husband; Promises Like Pie-Crust; The Lowest Place; Song; The Queen of Hearts; A Dumb Friend; Life and Death; Somewhere or Other; Weary in Well-Doing; Summer; What I would Give!; Grown and Flown; Eve; Shall I Forget?; Dead Hope; Enrica; Italia, lo Ti Saluto; A Duaghter of Eve; A Dirge; 'To-Day For Me'; A Chrismas Carol; Yet a Little While; 'I Wish I Could Remember'; 'Youth Gone, And Beauty Gone'; The Key-Note; He and She; A Life's Parallels; Pastime; One Sea-side Grave; 'Bury Hope'; 'Roses on a Brier'; 'Heaven's Chimes are Slow'; 'A Cold Wind Stirs; 'Lord What Have I to Offer?; 'The Fields are White'; 'Margaret Has a Milking Pail'; Maude: A Story for Girls

Editorial Reviews

Sisson is the quintessential English litterateur: career civil servant, poet with over 20 collections published since 1959, essayist, editor, novelist, critic and translator (Latin and other languages). The first poems here date from WW II; the last, a sequence, was written in 1995 when Sisson was 81. Throughout, his concerns are similiar: identity; mind and body; age; culture; landscape. His judgments of himself, and of humanity generally, are often harsh. "I have no person fit for resurrection," he says in an early poem; in one of the latest he writes, "So fumbling bodies try to make/ Friendship and love as best they can:/ None ever was without mistake/ and lies by woman and by man." Sisson is consistently plain, if not always clear; in these poems, he is rarely adventurous in meter or language. Individual poems"On My 51st Birthday" and "The Mappemonde"are outstanding, but the collection overall has a one-note tone and seems somewhat dated and weighty. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly