CONTEXT:
-
Rossetti’s religion
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Romantic poetry: William Wordsworth emphasized the
importance of expressing natural feelings when he argued that it was his
intention to create a poetry which was a
‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'
INTERPRETATION/ANALYSIS
My
heart is like a singing bird
Whose
nest is in a watered shoot;
My
heart is like an apple-tree
Whose
boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My
heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
This is an uncharacteristically
happy poem! The images of nature are beautiful, full of love and promise and
celebration. Unlike many of Rossetti’s works which are tinged with sadness,
guilt or loss, this seems to be simply pure joy.
This first stanza uses repeated
similes of nature to convey the possibility and hope, the freshness of life
once love is arrived. There’s a slightly unusual generic nature to Rossetti’s
imagery here – often she names specific birds, for example, but here the use of
“singing bird” implies that all of nature is “singing” and celebrating the
arrival of her love. The abundance and richness of nature shows how joyful the
speaker is; the “thickset fruit” and the “watered shoot” show nature at all its
stages of life. The “halcyon sea” suggest peace, warmth and calm – there’s
almost too much pleasure to be borne.
The poem is also rife with
colour, with the “rainbow shell” creating a further impression of richness and
lavishness. The rainbow also bears religious connotations, as a rainbow was
sent by God following the flood, as a promise to Noah that such an event would
never happen again. The simplicity of the final couplet of the stanza is almost
heart-breaking in its joyful honesty: “Because my love is come to me.”
Yet is there a note of uncertainty here, or are we
searching too hard for alternate meanings? The “thickset fruit” of the apple
tree might hold implications of the fall, and threaten to break the bough it
lies on. The “watered shoot” is either easily disrupted and dug up, or will
eventually disrupt the nest – shoots grow, and will pull it apart – and the
rest of the nature here, though beautiful, is temporary and quickly ruined. Is
the heart’s gladness as temporary? This poem could be interpreted as being
about either religious of romantic love – the “birthday of my life” in the
second stanza could be the sense of renewal felt when a lover arrives, or could
be a reference to a christening/confirmation and acceptance of Jesus.
Raise
me a dais of silk and down;
Hang
it with vair* and purple dyes;
Carve
it in doves and pomegranates,
And
peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work
it in gold and silver grapes,
In
leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because
the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me
In the second stanza the richness continues, but moves inside
and away from nature, to creations of mankind – the dais or platform being
created to celebrate the lover is covered with rich, man-made vair and purple,
a rich royal colour. The dais and its surrounding sound like a temple, created
either to God or a human lover. Here, too nature is called upon and the
carvings add to the celebration, symbolizing peace (doves), and fertility
(pomegranate). All these symbols were in use in Victorian secular art and
culture, particularly the exoticism of the pomegranate and peacock as art and
design took influences form the growing British Empire. However, there is a
further possibility of interpreting this poem as religious love, supported by
the peacock – a symbol of all-seeing
Christianity. These carvings, in
wood, gold and silver, will be long-lasting, not the temporary beauty of the
first stanza’s natural world. Yet here, too, is it perhaps too beautiful, and cloying or overdone in its efforts to produce a
beauty to rival nature?
Images of royalty pervade this
stanza – the dais from which royalty might address a court, the royal colour of
purple, the heraldic fleur-de-lys, a lily-like image often found on coats of
arms. These elevate the love, or acknowledge the superior nature of God.
The poem could also be interpreted as the human impulse
to create in order to memorialize love – frequently found in Rossetti’s work.
The natural imagery, although romanticized and beautiful, is fleeting, and so
the speaker turns in the second stanza to a more permanent method of
celebration and memorial.
STRUCTURE AND FORM
Lyric poem using imagery of beauty and nature, in a musical sound
which focuses on exploring emotion.
Iambic tetrameter creates a song-like rhythm, consistently
stressing the word “heart”.
Trochees in the
second verse mean stress falls on “raise”, “hang”, “carve” and “word”,
emphasizing the desire to create something new in celebration.
CRITICAL INTERPRETATION
The rich artistic details of
the "dais" overshadow the impulse of love that generates its gothic
artifice (note, for instance, the use of the archaic "vair"), and
those details, in contrast with the natural images of the poem's first stanza,
imply that the only true and permanent fulfillment of love is to be found in
the art it gives birth to.
There is a further critical interpretation that Birthday is not religious – Lynda
Palazzo, argues that Rossetti never tries to hide her religious poetry – so why
would this be implied or beneath the surface? Instead, she suggests that it’s
an exploration of the poetic itself and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s idea that everything has a point at which pleasure
in it becomes poetry in itself. This builds on the Romantic idea that
everything should be experienced as fully as possible. So the beauty and
splendor, of both the natural and the man-made worlds, are so beautiful that
they are themselves poetry: pure emotion to be experienced.
CONNECTIONS:
Religion: Song; Remember;
Twice
Romantic love: Maude
Clare; No Thank You John; Remember; Echo
Natural
imagery: Song; Maude Clare;
Goblin Market;
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