Cousin Kate - Christina Rossetti

• ”high”

  “To sit with him on high”
• “shameless”

  “To lead a shameless shameful life”
• “lured”

  ”He lured me to his palace-home”
• “son”

  “My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride“
• “sand”

  “Your love was writ in sand”
• "He lured me to his palace-home"

  • verb "lured" suggests ill-intention and gives negative implications
• "To lead a shameless shameful life"

  • oxymoronic language reflects the narrator's confusion and confliction regarding the situation she is in
• "To sit with him on high"

  • suggests that Kate (the cousin) was able to climb the social ladder as a result of her marriage to the lord/nobleman
• "Your love was writ in sand"

  • suggests that Kate's love was fleeting and that she only married for wealth and status
  • metaphor
• "My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride"

  • narrator's son represents the societal taboo of having sex outside of marriage but the narrator loves him nonetheless
  • juxtaposition
  • repetition of possessive pronoun "my" represents how the narrator holds the fact she has a son fathered by the nobleman over Kate, as she does not.