The Poetry of Christina Rossetti Quiz

Answer: plays

Christian Rossetti is best known as a poet, but she also wrote short stories and non-fiction. Her collection "Commonplace, and other short stories" was published in 1870. Her collection "Speaking Likenesses", published in 1874, contains tales that reflect on the behaviour of three little girls. Her nonfiction works include "Called to Be Saints" (1881), two books on Dante, "Seek and Find: A Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicite" (1879), and "Time Flies: A Reading Diary" (1885). Many of her non-fiction works were published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Rossetti wrote poems for both adults and children. Her children's poetry includes such verses as "Caterpillar", "The Wind", "What is Pink?" (or "Color") and "What Does the Bee Do?"

Answer: Goblin Market

Published in 1862, "Goblin Market" tells the story of two sisters who are tempted with fruit by river goblin merchants. It begins:

"Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy'."

Replete with sexual imagery, the poem is a warning against the effects of carnal indulgence, but ends with a note of hope and redemption. Rossetti herself volunteered at Highgate Penitentiary for fallen women in the spring of 1859, not long after composing the poem. Other interpretations of the poem revolve around economics and feminism.

Answer: Love Came Down at Christmas

Rossetti's poem begins:

"Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign."

The poem was included in Christina Rossetti's 1893 poetry collection "Verses", where it was given the title "Christmastide". The poem has been been given varied musical arrangements by Harold Darke, Leo Sowerby, Jennifer Higdon, and John Rutter, among other composers.

Answer: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"Goblin Market and Other Poems" was published in 1862. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, better known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was a painter, illustrator, and poet himself. Along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. His art was often sensual and also contained elements of medieval revivalism.

Answer: hand

The poem "Remember" continues:

"Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
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 the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad."

Christina Rossetti was born on December 5, 1830 in London, England. She never married. She broke off her engagement to the painter James Collinson when he reverted to Catholicism. She also declined to marry the linguist Charles Cayley for religious reasons.

Answer: cypress

Written in 1826, "Song" remains one of Christina Rossetti's most popular poems. It reads:

"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."

This poem inspired Bear McCreary's 2015 musical composition "When I Am Dead."

Rossetti was diagnosed with Graves' disease in 1872, and with breast cancer in 1893. She died December 29, 1894 in Torrington Square.

Answer: The Cuckoo's Calling

"A Dirge" begins:

"Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo's calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying."

"The Cuckoo's Calling" was published in 2013 as the first detective novel in the Cormoran Strike series, which included "Silkworm", "Career of Evil", and "Lethal White".

Answer: sunless

These lines come from "Dream Land". This poem was set to music by Barbara Arens in "All Beautiful & Splendid Things: 12 + 1 Piano Songs on Poems by Women", which was published in 2017. Arens also set Rosetti's "In The Willow Shade" to music in the same publication. "Dream Land" begins:

"Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot."

Answer: She has died.

"The Prince's Progress and Other Poems" was published in 1866 and illustrated by Christina's brother Dante Gabriel. The frontispiece of the poem shows the grief-stricken prince when he receives the news of the princess's death. The poem begins:

"Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate."

Answer: Anglican

April 27 is Rossetti's feast day on the Calendar of Saints in the Anglican church (Church of England). The Church of England commemorates many of the same saints as the Roman Catholic Church but also adds some (often English) Christians not canonised by Rome.

The calendar commemorates those men and women "whose historical character and devotion are beyond doubt," according to Resolution 79 adopted at the ninth Lambeth Conference in 1958.

Answer: In the Bleak Midwinter

The poem begins:

"In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago."

The poem was first published as "A Christmas Carol" in the January 1872 issue of "Scribner's Monthly" and was later set to music by Gustav Holst and included in The 1906 English Hymnal. In 1911, Harold Darke created another musical setting for the Christmas carol.

Answer: "Hope" is the thing with feathers

"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" is the opening line to poem number 314 by Emily Dickinson.

"I have no wit, no words, no tears" is the opening line to Rossetti's "A Better Resurrection". Rossetti's poem "A Birthday" opens with "My heart is like a singing bird," and her poem "A Daughter of Eve" opens with "A fool I was to sleep at noon."

Answer: cold

In this Petrarchan sonnet, "After Death," the speaker addresses a man after her death:

"The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
'Poor child, poor child': and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold."

A Petrarchan sonnet has fourteen lines. The first octave (eight lines) typically follows an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme.

Answer: John

Christina Rossetti had three major suitors in her life, among them the painter John Brett (who painted a portrait of her), but ultimately she rejected them all. Her poem "No, Thank You, John" begins:

"I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always 'do' and 'pray'?"

Answer: In an Artist's Studio

This poem was written in 1856 and is a critical reflection on the artistic movement begun by her brother Dante. The poem critiques the artist for his idealized vision of woman:

"Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream."

The poem also suggests that the artist allows this repetitive vision to overwhelm his work: "The same one meaning, neither more or less."