Christina Rossetti Quotes

70 Sourced Quotes

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti
I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away.

Christina Rossetti
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 thick-set fruit.

Christina Rossetti
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.

Christina Rossetti
She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.

Christina Rossetti
We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?

Christina Rossetti
The rose saith in the dewy morn,
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.

Christina Rossetti
Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Christina Rossetti
There is no time like Spring
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track.

Christina Rossetti
And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek,
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak.

Christina Rossetti
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall - the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

Christina Rossetti
Rest, rest at the heart's core... till joy shall overtake.

Christina Rossetti
It's surely summer. for there's a swallow: Come one swallow, his mate will follow, The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.

Christina Rossetti
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.

Christina Rossetti
The violets whisper from the shade Which their own leaves have made: Men scent our fragrance on the air, Yet take no heed Of humble lessons we would read.

Christina Rossetti
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.

Christina Rossetti
Oh roses for the flush of youth,
And laurel for the perfect prime;
But pluck an ivy branch for me
Grown old before my time.

Christina Rossetti
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death; Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago

Christina Rossetti
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb.
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part.
Yet what can I give Him?
I give Him my heart.

Christina Rossetti
What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow. What are brief? today and tomorrow. What are frail? spring blossoms and youth. What are deep? the ocean and truth.

Christina Rossetti
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.

Christina Rossetti
All earth's full rivers can not fill
The sea that drinking thirsteth still.

Christina Rossetti
Winter is cold-hearted,
Spring is yea and nay,
Autumn is a weathercock
Blown every way:
Summer days for me
When every leaf is on its tree.

Christina Rossetti
If all the world were water fit to drown
There are some whom you would not teach to swim.

Christina Rossetti
O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee: I plead Thy love of me: - the shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.

Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away.

Christina Rossetti
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit.

Christina Rossetti
Where are the songs I used to know, Where are the notes I used to sing? I have forgotten everything I used to know so long ago. ("The Key-Note")

Christina Rossetti
The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.

Christina Rossetti