Andrew's Wiki
Rossetti Spring

Content

• Typical Rossetti because it’s morbid as hell
• Sure you have: “There is no time like Spring / When life’s alive in everything”
• But then you have: “Before the sun has power / To scorch the world up in his noontide hour”
• Sure you have “Telling of hidden life / That breaks forth underneath”
• But then you have “Life nursed in its grave by Death.”

Form

• Seems to work more by stresses than by literal feet: an alternation of three or four stresses in an uneven pattern: reminds me more of Hopkins

Quote

• “There is no life like Spring-life born to die”
  • Life passes. Anything that born is just dying.

Upshot

• She does want you do appreciate it, but to know that it dies
• It’s not pure glorying in death b/c of the beautiful descriptions
• It’s not just loving Spring because of all the death in it
• She knows that life is beautiful because it will die.