A Birthday

• AO1: In ‘A Birthday’, Rossetti explores… 

  • A profound devotion to God and how inconceivable he is
  • Excessive love and desire
• AO3:

  • By eating a few pomegranate seeds, Persephone tied herself to Hades. The pomegranate being a symbol of the indissolubility of marriage. Inconsolable at the loss of her daughter, the corn goddess Demeter prevented the earth from bearing fruit unless she saw her daughter again.
  • Rossetti was a devout Anglican and was known as ‘Sister Christina’ for her devotional writing
• Devotional poetry - religious poetry that worships God  
• AO2:

  • Rhyme Scheme: ABCBDBEC – religion is constant and stable in her life.
  • Form: Iambic tetrameter
  • Devotional poem in balladic form - storytelling and narration + informal
• “My heart is like a singing bird”

  • Metaphor- her heart is ineffable + incomparable - symbol of emotional and physical commitment + emotional vulnerability
  • heart - essential to her survival - similar to “Twice”
  • Anaphora - inarticulate + jubilance of speaker- lost for words
  • reference to nature-overwhelming rate of growth. Lexical field of nature brings them to life+ indicates love for the natural world
  • ABCB + “my heart” symbolises actual beat of heart
  • link to nightingale - liberation - joy / simile - idealisation + doubt / angelic choirs
• ‘Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;’

  • sense of security - emotive / personification - secure identity / present tense - doubt for the future 
• ‘My heart is like an apple-tree’

  • alliteration - innate - original sin - desires of man / growth + vitality
• ‘Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;’

  • alliteration - plenty and fulfilment / ‘my fruit is better than gold even the purest gold’
• ‘My heart is like a rainbow shell"

  • Rainbow shell is a biblical allusion to Noah (Genesis 9:) Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
  • Noah’s ark - God’s covenant with man
  • Perhaps it suggests that Rossetti is flooded by emotion
• ‘That paddles in a halcyon sea;’

  • deep state of content - exodus - Moses parts the red seas / hyperbolic 
  • “Halcyon” Greek myth. Hallcyon was married to Ceyx and their love was admired by the gods. One day Ceyx travelled by sea to visit the Oracle of Apollo despite his wife’s objections. He drowned on his journey and in her grief, Halcyon drowned herself. The gods turned Halcyon into a seabird and Ceyx into kingfisher so they could leave each other for eternity.
• ‘My heart is gladder than all these’

  • superlative expression - extent of joy / anaphora - unfiltered from the interference of logic 

  ‘Because my love is come to me.’

  • colloquial language - power of love / enjambment - overflowing nature of love / repetition - unchanging nature of Christ
• “Raise me a dais of silk and down; / Hang it with vair and purple dyes; / Carve it in doves and pomegranates, / And peacocks with a hundred eyes;”

  • Imperatives - volta; speaker adopts an assertive voice - reiterates jubilance in stanza1
  • A female peacock’s body doesn’t decay when it dies -eternity of love
  • Pomegranates allude to greek mythology and represent binding
  • A dais = an elevated platform - wants herself to be raised in Christ's honour.
  • ‘one hundred eyes’ - biblically accurate angels / Greek mythology - Hermes punishes a nymph and his eyes are as out of peacocks
• "Work it in gold and silver grapes,"

  • corruption of capital - ‘it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter heaven;‘
  • Gold and silver alludes to materialism
• "In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;"

  • decorative motifs exclusive to nobles - regal beauty - representative of purity - royal flower use in pre raphaelite art movement
  • Fleur-de-lys -symbol of Mary or the holy trinity - speaker may be rejoicing in adoration and devotion to religion.
  • Lilies - purity and chastity + commonly used in Pre-Raphaelite art - associated with spiritual wealth and royalty
• “Because the birthday of my life / Is come, my love is come to me.”

  • Devotion to God reigns. Biblical idea of being ‘born again’ as they are saved by God. Satisfying resolution in which the poet embraces her ‘birthday’ - the spiritual love that is the culmination of her life.
  • alliteration - personal + spiritually conjoined / ‘he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’ - between the material and the heavenly
  • theatrical - coming of jesus