lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

ARNOLD AND PRE-RAPHAELITE GROUPcould revive them all, and invent new rhythms andstanzas at will, and still be himself, unmistakable. Ifhe had only had a little more that was rememberable tosay, given fresh worth to some aspect of our experienceas all the greatest poets have done. There wasafter all something a little ominous in Swinburne'searly passion for Landor.Of lesser poets whom one, rightly or wrongly, connectswith this movement, Christina Rossetti had themost spontaneous lyrical note. Her longest poems,Goblin Market and The Prince's Progress, ethical andallegorical in content, are lyrical in form, and it is inlight-winged, essentially singing measures, with freelyinterchanging cadences—iambic, trochaic, anapaestic—rather than the more uniformly iambic ballad rhythmto which her brother and Morris leaned—that the mostof her, generally short, pieces are composed, exceptingthe sonnets and some of the more solemn devotionalpieces. The distinctively Pre-Raphaelitic strands, theexotic cultivation of older moods and modes, the vivid,picturesque presentation of emotionally significantdetails—these things are not obvious in her poetry.The feelings she expresses are simple and personal andnot numerous—a love of breezy English scenery, freshgreen meadows sprinkled with lambs, woods andorchards; love, a suppressed passion, sacrificed to dutyand devotion, a feeling to which we owe some of themore poignant of her songs: "Now, did you mark afalcon," "As rivers seek the sea," "Love strong asdeath is dead," "I took my heart in my hand," "Cometo me in the silence of the night," "I cannot tell youhow it was," and "Somewhere or other there mustsurely be." Lastly there are the devotional poems,the poems of the devotion for which she sacrificed117