Christina Rossetti Quotes

“He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.”
― Christina Rossetti

“Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of thoughts that I once had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”
― Christina Rossetti

“Good folk, I have no coin,
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusy heather.”
― Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems

“I'll love him til he loves me best
Me best of all, Maude Clare”
― Christina Rossetti, Poems of Christina Rossetti

“I charge you at the Judgement make it plain,
My love of you was life and not a breath.”
― Christina Rossetti

“Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy”
― Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market: A Tale of Two Sisters

“Evening by evening
Among the Brookside rushes,
Laura bow'd her head to hear,
Lizzie veil'd her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and fingertips.
"lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
who knows upon the soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the Goblins
Hobbling down the glen”
― Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems

“O cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand:
If he had fooled not me but you,
If you had stood where i stand,
He'd not have won me with his love,
Nor bought me with his land;
I would have spit into his face
And not have taken his hand.

Yet I have a gift you have not got,
And seem not like to get:
For all your clothes and wedding-ring
I've little doubt you fret.
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, closer yet:
Your father would give lands for one
to wear his coronet”
― Christina Rossetti

“I have no heart? Perhaps I have not; / But then you're mad to take offense / That I don't give you what I have not got; / Use your own common sense.”
― Christina Rossetti

“People admired her poetry, but she knew there were plenty of readers who questioned it. How could she write brokenhearted verse if she never loved? Why did she compose so much about death if she knew little of life?”
― Matthew Pearl, The Dante Chamber

“How many children could say their home hosted the humblest and highest at the same time, on any given evening invaded by expatriates their father never hesitated to invite in? Through the back door he welcomed a bookseller, organ grinder, biscuit maker, vagrant macaroni man, and one called Galli who thought he was Christ. Through the front, disgraced Italian counts and generals made as officious entrances as a small house on Charlotte Street afforded.”
― D.M. Denton, The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti

“One day in the country was worth a month in town and better than Christmas, her birthday, or even Papa saying she was like the moon risen at the full.”
― D.M. Denton, The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti

“Song

Oh roses for the ush 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.”
― Christina Rossetti, Christina Rossetti