Monna Innominata: a Sonnet of Sonnets
An imagined unnamed woman addresses her beloved in fourteen sonnets, wishing she could remember their first meeting and longing through repeated partings. She affirms their mutual love while placing God first, faces separation without hope of reunion on earth, and would welcome another who could make him happy. She entrusts him to God and ends with youth gone and love persisting in silence.
By Christina Georgina Rossetti · Genre: Sonnets, Love Poetry, Religious Poetry · 14 chapters · 3,217 words
First lines
Beatrice, immortalized by "altissimo poeta... cotanto amante; " Laura, celebrated by a great though an inferior bard, -- have alike paid the exceptional penalty of exceptional honor, and have come down to us resplendent with charms, but (at least, to my apprehension) scant of attractiveness.
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Monna Innominata: a Sonnet of Sonnets 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: Sonnets, Love Poetry, Religious Poetry
- Length: 3,217 words
- Structure: 14 chapters, 31 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Monna Innominata: a Sonnet of Sonnets by Christina Georgina Rossetti
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Sonnets — Fourteen rhymed, fourteen-line poems follow a prose introduction, each preceded by epigraphs from Dante and Petrarch.
- Love Poetry — The speaker addresses her beloved, affirms their mutual love, laments parting, and wishes for his happiness even if another takes her place.
- Religious Poetry — The speaker places God above her beloved, prays for him, and hopes for love beyond death.
Tags
sonnet sequence · mutual love · separation · longing · Christian faith · renunciation · aging
Contents
- Come Back to me, who Wait and Watch for You
- I Wish I Could Remember that First Day
- I Dream of you to Wake: Would that I Might
- I Loved you First: but Afterwards your Love
- O my Heart's Heart, and you who are to Me
- Trust me, I have not Earned your Dear Rebuke
- "Love me, for I Love you" -- and Answer Me
- "I, if I Perish, Perish" -- Esther Spake
- Thinking of you, and all that was, and All
- Time Flies, Hope Flags, Life Plies a Wearied Wing
- Many in Aftertimes will Say of You
- If there be any One can Take my Place
- If I Could Trust Mine own Self with your Fate
- Youth Gone, and Beauty Gone if Ever There