Preview

A Birthday; Christina Rosetti - Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1627 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Birthday; Christina Rosetti - Analysis
‘A Birthday’ is an upbeat, jubilant poem about love, written by Christina Rossetti in 1861. While many believe that this love she is expressing so effusively is about a man, I believe that it is about her new-found love for God. Rossetti, after all, was a very religious person. The poem, surprisingly, has an exuberant, lively tone, a great contrast to her other works, which almost always give a sense of gloom and bleakness.
Rossetti creates a structured arrangement, allowing the images to flow smoothly. By separating the poem into two octets, containing eight syllables per line, Rossetti creates contrast by first, describing her feelings - her all-consuming happiness, how interchangeably light and heavy her feelings are - then explaining in detail the preparation that must be done to welcome the love that has come to her. Further creating a disparity are the imageries in the octets: the first octet uses imagery of nature, portraying the profusion and fecundity of her love, juxtaposed by the imagery of wealth and value in the latter, showing how much her love is worth.
The first stanza has a lexical motif, using a series of similes containing natural images, such as “a singing bird”, “an apple tree” and “a rainbow shell” which give connotations of abundance and natural, wholesome love, and symbols of new life, resurgence, and hope. Also, she uses an anaphora of “heart”, which underlines the strength of her love, as if she is scrambling for words to describe her feelings and excitedly looking for ways to explain and express the force of her love. Furthermore, it has an iambic rhythm which pushes the poem forward, emphasizing her urgency and excitement to express just how her heart feels. It rests on “heart”, reinforcing her love and even resembles a heartbeat.
The simile used in the beginning of the poem emphasizes how her love creates a new beginning for her by comparing her heart to “a singing bird. This comparison gives a joyful and excited tone, and implies a
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Analyzing The Poem 'Fishhawk'
    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Analyzing The Poem 'Fishhawk'

    Structurally, this poem has both the assonance and alliteration of a lyric poem. For example, “Watercress grows here and there…. Gentle maiden, pure and fair”, and the fishhawk’s song, guan guan. The subject of the poem is passionate love that has not/or cannot be obtained. There is a longing for this love that keeps him up at night. Love’s suffering…

    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Freewrite
    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Quinceañera by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Freewrite

    Upon reading the poem, imagery can be found throughout the entire poem. For example, in the first two lines you can imagine a doll being put away like a dead child in a chest, you cannot bring a dead child back to life. This is the burial of her childhood only to keep her memories and carry them with her for the rest of her life. Also, the second to last line where she is “wound,” twisted, “like the guts of a clock,” referring to her stomach. She feels a sense of anxiety here. This is her final emotion to conclude the poem. She fears growing up because of the responsibilities she will have to take on, the shame she felt when her period started, will…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Poetry Analysis of David by: Earle Birney
    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Poetry Analysis of David by: Earle Birney

    This poem has no set pattern that is constant throughout. It has eleven sections in which are broken down into quatrains. Some verses are very different from others adding a trace of a story. Therefore, the verses do not follow the same rhyming scheme, making the poems emotion serious and mature. The lack of verse form also adds to these emotions.…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Isolation In The Anglo Saxon Lover's Poem
    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Isolation In The Anglo Saxon Lover's Poem

    For example the first stanza, lines 1 through 5, tell of her first heartbreak from her husband. the caesura puts expression of sadness,sorrow, and grief. As well, in the fifth line states right out “my exile”.…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    4 O'Clock Birds Singing
    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages

    4 O'Clock Birds Singing

    In the poem, the author describes the scene of birds singing early in the morning and how quickly the sereneness ends. The author uses diction and metaphors to describe the birds’ song.…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Blake/Plath Essay
    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Blake/Plath Essay

    The “Morning Song” uses many language features throughout the poem to provide clear imagery, which shows how the arrival of the baby has affected the speaker’s life. First, the poem starts with the picture of a “fat gold watch,” which expresses the speaker’s idea that time is being taken away from her and that having a child is an enduring responsibility. In addition, the watch also represents the baby’s heartbeat, which is a constant reminder of the baby’s presence. Then the speaker goes on to create an image in the reader’s mind of a “New statue. In a drafty museum.” This image shows a variety of emotions the speaker feels, such as resent, pain, and sorrow. Additionally, the use of “statue” depicts an attitude of resent because it describes a sense of permanence, which the speaker has now recognized that her child has been born. Also, the use of “drafty museum,” creates an idea of distance between the speaker and her child. The statement, “I’m no more your mother,” is another example of the speaker’s attitude, which shows her distance and anger. Another image that aids in the expression of the speaker’s attitude is when she says, “Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.” This depicts the distinct and loud crys of the infant, which wakes the speaker at night, and it once again shows the distance between the speaker and her infant when she refers to the baby as if it were an object by calling it a cat. These vivid images definitely…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Malcolm X
    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Malcolm X

    The poem, “A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti is a strong poem that uses many literary devices as well as describing how she feels when she found her lover. Christina Rossetti’s poem lets the reader know that a Birthday is not always what it seems to be, but a happy moment in your life. She expresses her feelings and emotions in many ways. People that criticize her writings have many good and bad things to say about Christina’s poem “A Birthday.” This is because when she writes she has the tendency to use many different tones to describe and explain her poems.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Poem Comparison (Burns and Rossetti)
    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Poem Comparison (Burns and Rossetti)

    Though the subject of both Robert Burns ' "A Red, Red Rose" and Christina Rosetti 's "A Birthday" is love, the tone, diction, and form of each underline the different themes. The theme of the Burns poem is the beautiful ardency of the lover saying farewell to his love, while the Rosetti poem focuses on the joyous feelings of lovers being reunited. Both poems convey love as an emotion that transcends the immediate world of feeling; thus, references are made by the speakers to eternity, and vivid imagery is employed to describe extraordinary settings.…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Christina Rossetti's : Song
    • 1618 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Christina Rossetti's : Song

    Rossetti uses a variety of natural imagery to beautify the idea of life. She tells the reader to ‘plant no roses at my head’ where the symbol of the ‘rose’ embodies the theme of love, which was key in such a Romantic Era of poetry. Further use of the idea of living nature is used by ‘shady cypress tree’ which defines the idea of death as the branches of such a tree were traditionally carried at funerals in symbol of mourning, yet Rossetti’s orders to the reader to not plant such a thing shows that she does not wish the reader to ‘grieve’ over her as such. Through the tripled repetition of ‘I shall not’ in the first three lines of the second stanza, (which are followed by one of the five senses ‘see’, ‘feel’, ‘hear’), Rossetti tells the reader that she will not be able to witness such notions and mournful gestures (i.e. ‘sing no sad songs for me’) and instead metaphorically tells the reader to ‘be the green grass above me’ where the alliteration of the ‘g’ is used to create power and meaning, where the connotations of describing somebody as grass creates the idea of growing, moving on, flourishing in one’s own life. The following line created by enjambment ‘with showers and dewdrops wet’ continue the theme of naturally occurring weather and climate, yet have connotations and inferences of tears, as oppose to materialistic gestures, yet the idea of ‘showers’ and ‘rain’ (which is used again in the second stanza) create the pathetic fallacy thus conforming to the melancholy state which one would associate with a funeral. The continued use of such ‘natural’ language throughout the first stanza provokes the idea that the deceased are gone (as no religious references are made in this poem as to…

    • 1618 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    astrophel and stella microtheme
    • 659 Words
    • 2 Pages

    astrophel and stella microtheme

    The reader can infer that this initial poem is the source of inspiration for all of the others in this body of work due to a sophisticated metaphor the author utilizes to describe this particular work. It is interesting to note that in the very first few lines of this poem, the author explicitly denotes that this entire collection of poems are written in the hopes that the maiden, Stella, will read them and take “pity” and deliver “grace” to the star-struck lover Astrophel. Still, when it comes to actually forming the words that may inspire the maiden such, the poet employs a metaphor in which he likens his brain (which is responsible for his writing) to land and the product of that land to the writing which may win Stella. The difficulty that the poet incurs in effecting this process is implied by the description of his brain as “sun-burned” (Sidney), which implies it lacks the proper irrigation and water to make it harvest words. Therefore, the poet longs for “fresh and fruitful showers” (Sidney) in order to produce the words that will eventually win Stella.…

    • 659 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Luscios Imagery Essay Example
    • 1447 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Luscios Imagery Essay Example

    Overall, "An Apple-Gathering" by Christina Rossetti is a poem dealing with a young woman's past rejection in love - at the…

    • 1447 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Birthday
    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A Birthday

    A simile is comparison with one thing described as if it were another, using the words "like" or "as". In the poem similes are used to portray the joy of the speaker. Example of the joy of the speaker are found in the liens "My heart is like a singing bird", and "My heart is like a rainbow shell". In the story a simile is used in expressing the initial shock of the character. The words describing the characters shock are "a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A Birthday
    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A Birthday

    Everything in the first stanza speaks of the happiness Rossetti sees around her, and the repeated expression ‘My heart is like . . .’ stresses this joy, but she says at the end of the first stanza that her “heart is gladder than all these” which implies that what the poet is feeling is more than she can put in words.…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    My Birthday
    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages

    My Birthday

    In the first stanza, Christina Rossetti creates a mood of happiness and love. She describes her heart as “a singing bird” and this is forms an image of simple, natural joy. She moves on to say that the bird is in a nest which is a safe, warm place. The nest is in “watered shoot” which suggest development and growth. The connection between the nest and the shoot is her heart. Her love is still developing but it is in a safe and warm place as it grows. Just like the shoot in the nest, it is being nurtured. She next compares her heart to “an apple tree” which unlike the shoot is established and developed. This suggests that her love has grown into an older, more permanent love. Because the tree is filled with fruit it shows that her love is growing and it is ripe. The nature she describes is innocent, just like her love. Nothing is hidden because there is no shame. The next image she creates is a rainbow, which is almost mystical and imaginary. She says “like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea”, this suggests that her love has no set path to follow and it is just floating around in a calm area until it finds a way to travel. The fact that she says “in a halcyon sea”, tells us that there is no fighting in her life, it is tranquil and calm. A rainbow is God’s promise, so that could tell us that her love is promising and strong. The images she creates are increasing in intensity just like her love is growing stronger over the years. All the images created are beautiful and pure. She goes on to say that all of this is ecstatically beautiful and it is measureless, she can’t put her love into words. It is perfectly pure and beautiful.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Birthday
    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A Birthday

    In the poem, “A Birthday”, Christina Rossetti uses extensive and positive imagery, mostly pertaining to natural descriptions. In fact, the whole poem is composed of imagery, that are all solely for the purpose of relaying the sense of pure joy the speaker is feeling. The first line starts off with “My heart is like a singing bird” which gives the impression that her heart feels as elated as a bird does when singing. Another example is, “My heart is like an apple tree whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit.” This illustrates the fact that just like the apple tree with its limbs full of apples, the speaker’s heart is also “full” which could mean they are content, fulfilled, at peace, or something along those lines. The speaker also says “My heart is like a rainbow shell,” a colorful image possibly meaning that her “colorful” heart means the speaker feels vibrant and bright. Obviously the first part of the poem explains the emotions that the speaker is feeling. The second part of the poem is more focused on celebratory imagery, celebrating the speaker’s anticipation for the “birthday of their life.” It’s clearly known that the speaker is in love when they say “Carve it in doves and pomegranates,” since both doves and pomegranates symbolize love and romance. From these examples it can be confirmed that the speaker gives a lot of picturesque examples meant for explaining how the speaker passionately feels ecstatic, happy, and in love. Most of the imagery mentions natural things like plants, animals, etc. and this poem describes the speaker’s joy and bliss, which means that the speaker associates nature with feelings of happiness and…

    • 281 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics