A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
Sleeping at last
Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the stuggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.
No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.
Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.
Sappho
I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh
When the dull day is passing by,
I sigh at evening, and again
I sigh when night brings sleep to men.
Oh! It were better far to die
Than thus for ever mourn and sigh,
And in death's dreamless sleep to be
Unconscious that none weep for me;
Eased from my weight of heaviness,
Forgetful of forgetfulness,
Resting from pain and care and sorrow
Thro' the long night that knows no morrow;
Living unloved, to die unknown,
Unwept, untended and alone.
年轻的Christina命运多舛，自早体弱，受病魔困扰。因为强烈的宗教信仰经常促使她陷入挣扎、彷徨、荒芜的精神状态，她因此而拒绝了两位优秀的但与其信仰不合拍的求婚者。始终单身未嫁，最后英年早逝。日前，看了Virginia Woolf在“I’m Christina Rossetti”中描述一片断：
“suddenly there uprose from a chair and paced forward into the centre of the room a little woman dressed in black, who announced solemnly, “I am Christina Rossetti!” and having so said, returned to her chair.” 突然，一个身着黑衣的女人从椅子上站出来，走到会场中间，表情肃穆地说“我是克里斯汀娜.奥塞梯”，说完，径直回到座位上。
What an enigmatic poetess! From her poems, there is always the intense struggle between faith and passion, death and pain, the despair and moral uprightness. While this feeling occurs to us unexpectedly and suddenly yet extinguished in my elaborate repression, yet resides in Christina’s heart instinctively and unfadingly. She seldom concede her feverous passion for religion, she never glories her melancholy and despair. She maybe fail to overwhelm the desperate emotion, she maybe derive the soul relief and joy from outpouring them but she never seemed to override it , beautify it, or hide it in the bush. She simply incorporates this piercing feeling into her poems in her regular simple, natural poetic speech. Sometimes，I wonder, there is some shady shadow of her in me, her flickering mood, her predicament, because I can distinctly feel the impulse of her mental battle that happens to me frequently. Then I presume, there is always inexplicable and subtle sorrow, pain, joy, shame, hopelessness in our heart, in the human heart, but Christina gracefully articulate them in her poems to ,perhaps, win a bit of sunlight survived after the mental storm. For more interpretation, read them as carefully as I can.