Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems

My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is a watered shoot;My heart is like an apple-treeWhose boughs are bent with thickest fruit.--From A BirthdayFrom the sensuous, deliciously scary, and popular Goblin Market to the delicate and musical Sing-Song, Christina Rossetti's verses feature earthy, almost tactile images. As the sole woman among the Pre-Raphaelites, her work has a unique feminine perspective. Among the selections by Jan Marsh, author of an acclaimed biography of Christina and her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are At Home, Confluents, Maude Clare, and Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims.