i7o I'll bring you plums tomorrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
175 What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
i8o Odorous indeed must be the mead Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap.'
Golden head by golden head,
185 Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,
190 Like two wands of ivory Tipped with gold for awful0 kings. awe-inspiringMoon and stars gazed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
195 Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their rest:
.
147 0 / CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
p ?V GOELI N MARKE T an d ethe r poem s b y CliriftmaRoffett i w 'gPT-rgiftxgiiP^ 7! j M / ''_Qol<ler) ihuccd by goccLc.r/ .e.codJi 9 Londo n an d Cambridg e jMacmilla n an d C0.18S2. WJL
This frontispiece is one of the two illustrations that Dante Gabriel Rossetti provided for his
sister's first volume of poetry in 1862.
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one nest.
Early in the morning
200 When the first cock crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
205 Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should:
210 Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night. 215 At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
