“Crying, my little one, footsore and weary”

By Christina Rossetti 1830–1894 Christina Rossetti

Crying, my little one, footsore and weary?

Fall asleep, pretty one, warm on my shoulder:

I must tramp on through the winter night dreary,

While the snow falls on me colder and colder.

You are my one, and I have not another;

Sleep soft, my darling, my trouble and treasure;

Sleep warm and soft in the arms of your mother,

Dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.

Source: Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (Macmillan, 1893)

Biography

Of all Victorian women poets, posterity has been kindest to Christina Rossetti. Her poetry has never disappeared from view, and her reputation, though it suffered a decline in the first half of the twentieth century, has always been preserved to some degree. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a resurgence largely impelled by the emergence of feminist criticism; much of . . .

Continue reading this biography