"turn the light off / leave me where i lay / bring the night on / not another day"

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another 19th century woman writing in a ballad form:


Up-Hill, Christina Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
    Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
    From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
    A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
    You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
    Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
    They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
    Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
    Yea, beds for all who come.


As you know, Bob, while Rossetti increasingly devoted herself to devotional writings as she got older, she wrote religious poetry from the start -- often in a deceptively simple manner. This is from early in her career, first published the year before her first collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems (which included it).

---L.

Subject quote from "Bring the Night On," Eve 6 (neither woman nor victorian).

Comments

[cmcmck]

A lot more accessible than GM Hopkins, although don't get me wrong, I love Hopkins' deeply hurting religious verse. It must by hard to be an SJ and to have such painful doubts about your faith.

[larryhammer]

I go to Rossetti and Hopkins for very different reading experiences. Hopkins is great if you want to get word-drunk.

[cmcmck]

He has influenced my own work deeply along with Yeats, Dylan Thomas and the Saxon poets

[larryhammer]

And mine, though not as much as Auden and Donne, and of course Ovid.