A Birthday

• Genre / Imagery

  ‘thickest fruit’ / ‘watered shoot’

  • Uncharacteristically happy poem
  • Images of nature are beautiful, full of love promise and celebration.
  • Contrasts Rossetti’s other poems focused on sadness and guilt (Shut Out)
  • Similes of nature to convey the possibility of hope and freshness of life once love has arrived.
  • Abundance of richness emphasises the speakers joy.
  • Nature is at all stages of life (Shut Out)
• Religion

  ‘Rainbow Shell’

  • Creates an impression of richness and lavishness.
  • A rainbow was sent by God following the flood, as a promise to Noah that no such event would ever happen again.
• Alternate Interpretations: Temporary Happiness?

  ‘Thickest fruit’ / ‘Watered shoot

  • Note of uncertainty.
  • The fruit of the apple tree might hold implications of the fall and threaten to break the land it lies on.
  • The shoot could be dug up and will eventually disrupt the nest.
  • Nature is temporary and can be quickly ruined.
  • Is her heart’s happiness temporary?
• Religion

  • Poem could be referencing religious or romantic love.
  • ’the Birthday of Life.
  • Second stanza could be the sense of renewal felt when a lover arrives or a reference to a Christening and the acceptance of Jesus.
• Religion & Nature

  ’carve it on doves and pomegranates’

  • Happiness is caused by God or a human lover.
  • Nature is called upon and the carvings add to the celebration.
  • Peacocks, pomegranates and doves used in Victorian secular art and culture.
• Religious Symbols

  • Could interpret the poem as religious love, supported by the peacock as a symbol of Christianity.
  • The carvings in the wood are long lasting and are not the temporary beauty seen in the first stanza.
  • Yet it could be seen as overdone, too beautiful to rival nature.
• Order & Love

  • Could be interpreted as the human impulse to create and memorise love, frequent in Rossetti’s poetry.
  • The natural imagery is romanticised yet fleeting so the speaker turns to a more permanent method of celebration
• ‘the rich artistic details overshadow the impulse of love that generates it‘s gothic artifice, and in contrast with natural images imply that the only fulfilment of love is to be found in the art it gives birth to.’

  Anthony H Harrison

  Professor of English

  North Carolina State University