Explore "Monna Innominata: a Sonnet of Sonnets" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Vien dietro a me e lascia dir le genti. " -- Dante. / "Contando i casi della vita nostra. " -- Petrarca.
Many in aftertimes will say of you / "He loved her" -- while of me what will they say? / Not that I loved you more than just in play, / For fashion's sake as idle women do. / Even let them prate; who know not what we knew / Of love and parting in exceeding pain, / Of parting hopeless here to meet again, / Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view. / But by my heart of love laid bare to you, / My love that you can make not void nor vain, / Love that foregoes you but to claim anew / Beyond this passage of the gate of death, / I charge you at the Judgment make it plain / My love of you was life and not a breath.