Christina Rossetti wrote:
A Daughter Of Eve
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:--
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.
Christina Rossetti
cf Folk song "A Bunch of Thyme".
"So maidens keep your garden fair,
Let no man steal away your thyme."
What she really meant of course was:
A Daughter Of Eve
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
With local yokel Billy,
Upon that comfortless sand dune;
I let him pluck my rose too soon,
With his great throbbing willy.
With feelings mixed I homeward crept,
My precious jewel he's taken;
This rough coarse lad with whom I slept,
At sex he seemed most sure adept,
I came, no need of fakin'.
But what will come in future spring
My belly growing fat;
A child from out my loins may spring,
And I without a wedding ring,
I'll nurse the bastard brat.
You might like to look at her "Goblin Market." That seems decidedly weird to modern ears.
They hadn't invented lesbians in the 1860s.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002