Rossetti quotes

Death/finality/grief - Song: When I am dead, my dearest x2

‘I shall not hear the nightingale/Sing on, as if in pain’ / ‘And if thou wilt, remember/And if thou wilt, forget’

Death/finality/grief - Remember x3

‘Remember me when I am gone away’ / ‘Gone far away into the silent land’ / ‘Better by far that you should forget and smile/Than that you should remember and be sad’

Death/finality/grief - Echo x3

‘Come in the speaking silence of a dream’ / ‘how sweet, too sweet, too bittersweet’ / ‘that I may live/My very life again tho’ cold in death’

Depression - From The Antique

‘None would miss me in all the world,/How much less would care or weep’

Religious guilt - Good Friday

‘Am I a stone, and not a sheep’

Sexual love - Maude Clare x2

‘My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare’ / ‘I’ll love him till he loves me best’

Sexual love - Souer Louise De La Misericorde x2

‘Oh vanity of vanities, desire!’ / ‘Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher’

Sexual love - Twice x2

‘With a critical eye you scann’d’ / ‘As you set it down it broke’

Religious/platonic love/agape - Good Friday

‘But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of thy flock’

Religious/platonic love/agape - Twice

‘O my love, O my love’ → ‘O my God, O my God’

Religious/platonic love/agape - No, Thank you, John

‘Yet don’t keep in view ulterior ends’

Faith - Up-Hill x2

‘Does the road wind up-hill all the way’ / ‘Will there be beds for me and all who seek?/Yea, beds for all who come’

Faith - In the Round Tower at Jhansi

‘Not a hope in the world remained’ → ‘It is not pain/Thus to kiss and die’

Female oppression/agency - From The Antique x3

‘Doubly blank in a woman’s lot’ / ‘I wish and I wish I were a man:/Or, better than any being, were not’ / ‘Would wake and weary and fall asleep’

Female oppression/agency - Shut Out

‘He left no loophole great or small’

Female oppression/agency - Twice

‘Yet a woman’s words are weak;/You should speak, not I’

Female oppression/agency - No, Thank you, John

‘I would rather answer ‘No’ to fifty Johns/Than answer ‘Yes’ to you’

Female oppression/agency - Maude Clare

‘Take or leave it as you will/I wash my hands thereof’

Secrecy - Winter, My Secret x3

‘my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell’ / ‘I cannot ope to everyone who taps’ / ‘Perhaps my secret I may say/Or you may guess’

Joy - A Birthday x2

‘my heart is like a singing bird’ / ‘My love is come to me’

Goblin Market - commodification of the female body x4

‘Come buy’ / ‘merchant men’ / ‘I have no coin’ / ‘clipp’d a precious golden lock instead’

Goblin Market - temptation/desire x2

‘We must not look at goblin men’ / ‘She suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more’

Goblin Market - sexual degradation/female barrenness x3

‘sunk eyes and faded mouth’ / ‘kernel’ / ‘but there came none’

Goblin Market - prostitution/rape

‘Squeezed their fruits/Against her mouth to make her eat’

Goblin Market - redemption x2

‘Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices’ / ‘Eat me, drink me, love me’

Goblin Market - sisterhood x2

‘For there is no friend like a sister’ / ‘Golden head by golden head/Folded in each other’s wings’

Goblin Market - reinstation of status quo

‘When both were wives/With children of their own’

Contextual - Passing Away - x3

‘A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay’ ‘thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden’ / ‘New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray’/ ‘Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray’