While nearly all of Christina Rossetti’s other love poems focus on themes of loss and isolation, “A Birthday,” which was first collected in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), articulates the ecstasy of found love. In it, the speaker grasps joyously to identify those images and comparisons which might accurately express her exhilaration. She searches first in the realm of the natural, attempting to equate her emotions with a “singing bird,” “an apple tree” heavy with fruit, and “a rainbow shell” in the sea. But none of these natural wonders can compare: in love, her heart “is gladder than all these.” In the second stanza, the speaker abandons the search for the perfect simile, or comparison, and instead demands action. In honor of her figurative “birthday,” she demands the construction of a lush dais replete with “silk and down,” “doves” and “peacocks with a hundred eyes,” gold and silver. Such a construction, ornamented with images from nature, can better represent her love because it is a lasting artifact, like poet John Keats’ Grecian urn in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Unlike nature, which perishes, the dais will always mark the day in which “love has come” to the speaker.
Explanation:Rossetti was born in London, England, in 1830 to Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori Rossetti. Her father was an Italian exile who had moved to London some four years earlier. As a child Rossetti lived in Buckinghamshire in England’s countryside and often visited her maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, who lived nearby. These experiences gave her a lifelong love for nature and animals. In 1839 the Rossetti family moved to London where Christina was to spend her adolescent years. Her father taught Italian at King’s College and tutored students privately as well. As his health declined, the family developed other sources of income. For a time Rossetti’s mother became a governess and opened a small school in London. In 1853 the family moved to Somerset to run a school, but that effort ended a year later in failure. Rossetti’s brother William, who worked for the Inland Revenue Office and wrote for newspapers, was to provide the bulk of the family’s income. Rossetti demonstrated her poetic gifts early, writing sonnets in competition with her brothers William and Dante Gabriel. Her first published poem appeared in the Athenaeum magazine when she was eighteen. Dante Gabriel founded the journal The Germ in 1852, and Rossetti became a frequent contributor. Her book Goblin Market and Other Poems appeared in 1862 in an edition for which Dante Gabriel provided two illustrations. He also designed and provided woodcut illustrations for Rossetti’s next book, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866).
absorption is a physical or chemical phenomenon or a process in which atoms, molecules or ions enter some bulk phase – liquid or solid material. This is a different process from adsorption, since molecules undergoing absorption are taken up by the volume, not by the surface
Answers & Comments
Answer:
While nearly all of Christina Rossetti’s other love poems focus on themes of loss and isolation, “A Birthday,” which was first collected in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), articulates the ecstasy of found love. In it, the speaker grasps joyously to identify those images and comparisons which might accurately express her exhilaration. She searches first in the realm of the natural, attempting to equate her emotions with a “singing bird,” “an apple tree” heavy with fruit, and “a rainbow shell” in the sea. But none of these natural wonders can compare: in love, her heart “is gladder than all these.” In the second stanza, the speaker abandons the search for the perfect simile, or comparison, and instead demands action. In honor of her figurative “birthday,” she demands the construction of a lush dais replete with “silk and down,” “doves” and “peacocks with a hundred eyes,” gold and silver. Such a construction, ornamented with images from nature, can better represent her love because it is a lasting artifact, like poet John Keats’ Grecian urn in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Unlike nature, which perishes, the dais will always mark the day in which “love has come” to the speaker.
Explanation:Rossetti was born in London, England, in 1830 to Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori Rossetti. Her father was an Italian exile who had moved to London some four years earlier. As a child Rossetti lived in Buckinghamshire in England’s countryside and often visited her maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, who lived nearby. These experiences gave her a lifelong love for nature and animals. In 1839 the Rossetti family moved to London where Christina was to spend her adolescent years. Her father taught Italian at King’s College and tutored students privately as well. As his health declined, the family developed other sources of income. For a time Rossetti’s mother became a governess and opened a small school in London. In 1853 the family moved to Somerset to run a school, but that effort ended a year later in failure. Rossetti’s brother William, who worked for the Inland Revenue Office and wrote for newspapers, was to provide the bulk of the family’s income. Rossetti demonstrated her poetic gifts early, writing sonnets in competition with her brothers William and Dante Gabriel. Her first published poem appeared in the Athenaeum magazine when she was eighteen. Dante Gabriel founded the journal The Germ in 1852, and Rossetti became a frequent contributor. Her book Goblin Market and Other Poems appeared in 1862 in an edition for which Dante Gabriel provided two illustrations. He also designed and provided woodcut illustrations for Rossetti’s next book, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866).
Explanation:
absorption is a physical or chemical phenomenon or a process in which atoms, molecules or ions enter some bulk phase – liquid or solid material. This is a different process from adsorption, since molecules undergoing absorption are taken up by the volume, not by the surface