A Dirge by Christina Georgina Rossetti
A speaker asks why someone was born during snowfall and died while lambs were grazing. They wish the birth had coincided with cuckoo calls, green grapes or departing swallows, and the death with falling apples and sodden wheat stubble.
By Christina Georgina Rossetti · Genre: Elegy, Lyric Poetry · 121 words
First lines
Why were you born when the snow was falling? / You should have come to the cuckoo's calling, / Or when grapes are green in the cluster, / Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster / For their far off flying / From summer dying.
Why did you die when the lambs were cropping? / You should have died at the apples' dropping, / When the grasshopper comes to trouble, / And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, / And all winds go sighing / For sweet things dying.
What this Textopian page supports
A Dirge is listed on Textopian as a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Christina Georgina Rossetti
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Elegy, Lyric Poetry
- Length: 121 words
- Structure: 1 section, 2 paragraphs
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- Work identity for A Dirge by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Elegy — The speaker mourns the person addressed, questioning the timing of their death and wishing it had accompanied autumn's dying vegetation.
- Lyric Poetry — Two rhymed stanzas express the speaker's lament through direct questions and wishes about birth, death and seasonal changes.
Tags
mourning · birth · death · seasons