I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numbed too much for hopes or fears; Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me. My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me. My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perished thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King: O Jesus, drink of me.
This poem was originally published in Goblin Market and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1862) and is in the public domain.
One of the most celebrated poets of the Victorian era, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English writer of Romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She was the youngest of four siblings, among them the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, several of whose paintings she sat for, famously modeling for the Virgin Mary. Her father was an Italian political exile to London and instilled in her a love of Dante Alighieri and the Italian language, which he taught at King’s College until being struck ill and rendered blind. He died when Christina was thirteen, and from then onward she suffered bouts of depression and physical illness. Loss and death, heaven, renunciation, the need for grace, and the perfection of divine love are recurring themes in her poetry. A devout Anglican whose verse gives vivid expression to the life of faith and to spiritual longing, she is recognized as a saint by the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, who celebrate April 27 as her feast day.
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