Birthday of My Life

“What a week.”

I am very British in my understatement. See how British?

I will not get into the frustrations of the week, here, today.

What I will do is share a dreamy thing by Christina Rossetti, a Victorian poet.

I love the imagery of beauty and plenty: the words alone are like a bough bent with thickset fruit and that is one reason we chose this for a reading at our wedding. However, it’s the sentiment at the end that I was reminded of the last few days, as my husband and I have slogged through a truly difficult time together, with a lot less yelling and sulking and blaming and a lot of more hugging and cheering on and appreciation than I would have expected.

A Birthday

by: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

• Y heart is like a singing bird

  Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

  My heart is like an apple-tree

  Whose boughs are bent with thick-set 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.

  Raise me a daïs 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.