A Birthday
Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
    Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
    Whose boughs are bend 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 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 graes,
    In leaves and silver felur-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
    Is come, my love is come to me.

Source: poetryfoundation.org

Christina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. She is perhaps best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

Rossetti is now reconsidered a major Victorian poet. Her poetry being one of intense feelings, her technique refined within the forms established in her time.