A Day Late

Yesterday was World Poetry Day and you can read more about it at the UN's webpage. However, and perhaps more importantly, it was also my good friend Dain's birthday. This I forgot because I'm not all that good with dates and it's not on his Facebook profile. So, Happy Birthday, Dain!

And here are a couple of poems, both by Christina Rossetti, the good-natured and long-suffering sister of the more devilish Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Both contain hints of ecstasy, erotic and spiritual respectively, which is fitting since it is now officially spring and the weather has been gorgeous in Seattle today.

"A Birthday"

My heart is like a singing bird
     Whose nest is in 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 the halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
     Because my love is come to me.

Raise my a dais of silk and down;
     Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve in it doves and pomegranates,
     And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
     In leaves and silver fluers-dy-lys;
Because the birthday of my life,
     Is come, my love is come to me.

"Passing Away"

Passing away, saith the World, passing away;
Chances, beauty, and youth, sapped day by day;
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May;
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered: Yea.

Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away;
With its burdens of fear and hope, of labour and play,
Hearken what the past doth witness and say;
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
A midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay;
What thou and pray.
Then I answered: Yea.

Passing away, saith my God, passing away;
Winter passeth after the long delay;
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray:
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
Then I answered: Yea.