Saturday, 1 October 2016

Victorian Verse - A Birthday - Christina Rossetti

Another famous poem by Rossetti, often anthologised, particularly in children’s collections of poetry on account of its song-like repetition and rhythm and its vivid imagery.  This poem sustains its buoyant, joyous tone throughout and seems a world away from the poetry of loss and longing that characterises the others in the selection.  This seems to be the poetry of fulfilled and reciprocated love.  The title is, to an extent, a misleading pun.  The poem is not about “A Birthday”, but about a “Birth Day” – the day on which the poet is “born” into an enhanced reality because her lover comes to her.  

The poem is deceptively simple.  In fact, the imagery is rich and layered, with multiple references.  The imagery in the first stanza is drawn from nature; in the second, the imagery reflects royal pageantry and harks back to the Medievalism which was a feature of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, of whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina’s brother, was a member.  The imagery is also reminiscent of the Song of Solomon, a poem found in the Hebrew bible and the Old Testament, as is the use of repetition.  The Song is, primarily, an erotic love song between two lovers using imagery drawn from the landscape of, notably, Lebanon, as well as the contents of royal palaces.  However, it is interpreted by Hebrew scholars as a metaphor for the love of God for Israel and by Christians as Christ’s (the Bridegroom’s) love for the Christian church (the Bride).  This fusion of the sacred and the profane (secular) is a feature of much of Rossetti’s poetry.  She was brought up as a Catholic by her Italian parents and much of her poetry is overtly religious in theme.  An article on her religious poetry, which comments on “A Birthday”, can be found here.  Rossetti’s poem also contains classical illusions.

The poem is made up of two octets in regular iambic tetrameter, which give it a lilting, lyrical quality, reflective of her feeling of ecstasy.  The rhyme scheme is also regular – abcb dcec – which gives it a tight, controlled construction, evocative of the feeling of assurance and confidence contained in the final lines of each stanza. The layout is deliberate.  In stanza one,  "My heart" is made to stand out as the focus of the stanza and is then qualified each time by by the following line, which further describes the status of her "heart" and adds to the repetition, as if this is a prayer or incantation. In stanza two, her commands to her devotees front the line, with each succeeding line again building the image.

My heart is like a singing bird 
                Whose nest is in a water'd 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. 

The poet chooses three images from nature to explore her feelings of love, whether love for another or for Christ.  “Water” is an image of life; the bird sings because it is bringing forth new life from its nest, which in turn is given life by the water.  This idea of new growth gives way to the idea of fulfilment in the apples of autumn, so plentiful that they weigh down the boughs of the apple trees.  The final image is of peace, as she compares her feelings to the rainbow-hued shell of a creature that lives in the sea – possibly an abalone shell, which is multi-coloured.  The word “paddles” is childlike and innocent, as if the creature is safe and secure as it moves around its watery habitat.  Rainbows are a symbol of peace – God’s promise after the Flood that he would never punish Man again in such a way – and “halcyon” is the Classical name for the Kingfisher, a bright blue and orange river bird.  The Greeks believed the kingfisher created a floating nest on the sea in which to lay its eggs.  This signalled calm weather – as in “halcyon days” for a period of calm.

The poet’s heart is “gladder” than any of these contented images, however, because of the arrival of her beloved.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; 
                Hang it with vair and purple dyes; 
Carve it in doves and pomegranates, 
                And peacocks with a hundred 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.

On the arrival of the beloved, the imagery becomes rich and opulent, suggesting excess.  The simple repetition of “My heart” gives way to imperatives – “Raise”, “Carve”, “Work” – as she demands that people celebrate and bear tribute to the two of them, as if to royalty, in surroundings befitting this momentous occasion – the start of her real life.  The idea of this new life being also a marriage is contained in the word “dais” on which she wishes to be raised.  It was the custom to place the bride and groom on a raised platform in front of their guests, a custom which remains today when the bridal party sits at the “top table”. 

The “dais” is to be covered with the most expensive fabrics; purple was a colour reserved for royalty and “vair” was a fur cloak made up of the skins of, probably, squirrels, sewn together to show an alternating pattern of the front and back of the animal, so as to give a variegated pattern.  It is a word from Heraldry, again suggesting the medieval.  This “dais” is made of wood and she demands that it be decorated with designs of “doves” – symbols of peace, as this was the bird that brought back the olive branch to Noah after the Flood – and “pomegranates” – symbols of fertility, as it contains hundreds of seeds.  Both are mentioned repeatedly to describe the lovers in the Song of Solomon, as in “thou has dove’s eyes” and “thy temples (forehead) are like pomegranates”.  “Peacocks” are traditionally royal birds; they are associated with the Queen of the Gods, Hera, and were served to royalty during the medieval period at banquets.  They have also been adopted by Christian iconography as symbols of everlasting life.  In her newly exulted state, the poet wants real grapes and their vines to be replaced with decorations in gold and silver.  The “fleur-de-lys” is a heraldic symbol of royalty, in both Italy and France, and is common in medieval tapestry and manuscripts.  It is often (I believe mistakenly) translated as a “flower of the lily” and the etymology is still disputed.


The opulence of the imagery suggests that she is being born anew, out of an ordinary life into one where the natural world pours its bounty upon her.  She wants this altered state to be recognised with all the pomp and trappings usually associated with a royal marriages.  

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