Christina Rossetti

Christina RossettiDante Gabriel Rossetti [Public domain]

My hero is Christina Rossetti. She is a famous poet. She was born in London to Italian parents. Gabriele Rossetti, her father, was also a poet, so all of her siblings became writers. Rossetti had a strong sense of religion. Religion actually inspired most of her poems. She was a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

In the 1880’s Christina developed Graves’ disease, which is a thyroid disorder. Then on December 29, 1894, Christina Rossetti died from a fatal cancer that she developed in 1891. The best thing that she is remembered for is that her poems were always like songs.

A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose heart is like a watered shoot:
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset 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 dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple 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.