A Birthday
Christina Rossetti
Summary: The writer expresses her love towards another person in the form of a poem. She does this by expressing its innocence, magic and the surrealism that only people in love can experience. She wishes to express the fact that love is all you ever need, and that she’d be willing to do anything for her love and that it is only then that you start to realize who you are, and that it is the day when your life actually begins, thus the title “A Birthday”
Significant poetic devices and their significance (eg: Metaphors, symbols, rhyme scheme, form, imagery, repetition… etc)
Structure level analysis
1. The use of an Octave. This means that each stanza has eight lines.
a. This makes the poem look more fluid as the reader does not have to pause in his reading very much to switch to the next stanza. This makes it easier for the poet to get her point across, as love is usually one of those concepts which is very hard to express onto the reader as it comes in many forms, many of which are different depending on the poem. Therefore trying to make the reader see it your way is very hard so the reading should be as easy as possible. The second stanza is only there to exaggerate on another way that one can view her love as.
2. Rhyme on every second line. Rhyming on every line would become annoying while rhyming on every second line would be considered as enjoyable or even relaxing. The fact that it is on the second line also gives a sense of dependency, indicating that love is something you can depend on in every time of stress. The fact that she does this also makes it look that she did the work seamlessly, perhaps a tool used by the poet to demonstrate the fact that when you are in love, everything you do suddenly becomes so simple, which can also explain why every syllable and every aspect of the play is consistent no matter what. This is all used to create the dependency on love. Everyone needs it.
3. Second line indented every time. Note that the second line is always an exaggeration or an ‘add-on’ to the first line, which was not indented. This is an attempt by the poet to try and accentuate the fact that every line has this indented line for detail, illustrating the fact that what she describes cannot be easily expressed in a few words and that she would need much more than a few sentences to express her love for the other party. It is for this reason that the semi-colon is also largely used – to say that she wishes to go on and on about her love but can’t due to other limited factors as the semi-colon is used to link two or more independent points together. Note that she is also using this as a kind of replacement for the full stop to avoid enjambments to ensure fluidity in the poem. One stanza is still technically one line.
4. There is a full stop only found at the end of every stanza. This implies that the poet no longer feels the need to exaggerate anymore after the conclusion to her sentence, and that that statement is enough in itself to be able to convey all she wants to tell the world. That her “love is come to me”. Is there a need to go on?
5. The two stanzas each deal with a different view of the love. The first stanza talks about it passively, while the other one expresses it more actively. Note that the second sentence all has command phrases such as “Raise”, “Hang” and “Carve” at the beginning of the sentence while the first sentence only starts with “My heart”, which in this case is obviously the metaphorical one for her love. It is this way that she has said that love is both passive and active, and that you have to do something to maintain that love for the other party. She also tries to portray love as both passive and active, and that it is something that permeates both mediums and that it is all around us.
6. Repetition in “my heart is like”. This helps to bring the poem back into focus and display’s the main “objective” to the reader. Also gives a form of stableness to the poem and once again dependency. This is only shown in the first stanza, illustrating the fact that it is basically used to create a foundation to the poem and not meant to be a motif.
Word level analysis
1. The use of a simile can be seen in the first sentence of the poem. “My heart is like a singing bird”the use of the simile is to make her love look free and happy, as is the usual implication when one pictures such an image. The heart, of course, is the metaphorical one used to portray her love. She is trying to display the fact that when she is in love, she feels free and happy and that everything in her life is positive.
2. “My heart is like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea” This creates a sense of surrealism yet a sense of calm as it paddles through a halcyon sea, creating the image that love is vast and that when you fall in love, all suddenly becomes simple, surreal (in a good way) and calm, or halcyon. The “Rainbow shell” also adds to the surrealism and positivity, as rainbows are usually referred to in many stories.
3. “My heart is gladder than all of these” this demonstrates that even with the amount of description that she has gave towards how she feels about her love, she feels like that is not sufficient and that her love cannot be compared to anything, as she has previously tried to compare it with something before.
4. “Carve it in doves and pomegranates”. Doves are used as a sign of innocence, similar to how she is trying to display her innocence in her love for this guy. Pomegranates are also used to show fertility, indicating that love is young (metaphorically speaking of course) and beautiful, as childbirth usually is. Such is the use of the symbol for fertility.
5. “Because the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me” this means that her life has only just begun now, and that the year going up to it meant nothing in comparison. Therefore she is trying to say that she has begun anew, as a person finally in love. Love changes you and the change is so drastic that it is as if she has become another person.
Speaker of the poem: The poet herself, Christina Rosetti
Speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the poem:In love, and completely blinded by it.
Paired poems (Identify poems in the anthology and why they are appropriate to be paired)
1. Pied Beauty due to the descriptions in the objects that are often of great detail, painting a clear picture in the mind, similar to that of “The Birthday”. Evokes a calming mood, poor and sheer happiness, wonder directed at the theme/topic of the poem.
2. Sonnet: Composed upon Westminister Bridge. Deals with the same time period – the romanticism era. Describing an object of beauty (In Sonnet: Composed upon Westminister Bridge) with similar idyllic (ie: delightful in all respects) adjectives.
Memorable lines (that reinforce poetic devices)
1. “Because the birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me”
2. “My heart is a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea”
3. “My heart is gladder than all these”
4. “Carve it in doves and pomegranates”
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