Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems

By Christina Rossetti

Before W.B. Yeats wrote of the mystical in his poetry, Christina Rossetti wrote Goblin Market, also the title poem within the collection Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems. The title poem is about two sisters, and the lesson learned when one does not heed the warning to mingle with those at the Goblin Market.

Rossetti's collection blurred the lines between reality and imagination. Within this collection, Rossetti also has devotional poems, influenced by Rossetti's religious background. The poem Sweet Death focuses on the church and the beauty between life and death.

Christina Rossetti's poetry reflects the Pre-Raphaelite Period in the arts, which was started by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a handful of poets and artists, a style and movement that featured romantic poetry, ekphrastic pieces, and intense imagery.

Within Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems includes a group of pastoral poems that capture and focus on the beauty of nature. For example The Lambs of Grasmere, 1860 feature the hardships of being a shepherd in 1860 and overcoming the potential loss of his herd. With beautiful imagery, Rossetti creates a sense of empathy with the reader and also gives a glimpse of her life and view of the world.

This collection brings to life the mystical world with themes of religion, love, and mystical wonder which tie together the message and beauty of Christina Rossetti's poetry. This edition contains a foreword by award-winning author Fran Wilde.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WordFire Press
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781680575606

Book preview

Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems

Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems

Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

FOREWORD BY

FRAN WILDE

EDITED BY

VICTORIA ROSE LANE

WordFire Press

Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems, by Christina Rossetti

Originally published in 1913. This work is in the public domain. This new edition edited by Victoria Rose Lane

Foreword copyright © 2023 by Fran Wilde

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously.

The eBook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The eBook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share the eBook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-560-6

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-561-3

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68057-562-0

Cover Design by Victoria Rose Lane and Allyson Longueira

Cover artwork image by Jameo Images | Adobe Stock

Published by WordFire Press, LLC PO Box 1840 Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Edition 2023

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Goblin Market, and Other Poems, 1862

Goblin Market

In the Round Tower at Jhansi

June 8th, 1857

Dream Land

At Home

A Triad

Sonnet

Love the North

Winter Rain

Cousin Kate

Noble Sisters

Spring

The Lambs of Grasmere, 1860

A Birthday

Remember

Sonnet

After Death

Sonnet

An End

My Dream

Song

The Hour and The Ghost

A Summer Wish

An Apple Gathering

Song

Maude Clare

Echo

My Secret

Another Spring

A Peal Of Bells

Fata Morgana

‘No, Thank You, John’

May

A Pause Of Thought

Twilight Calm

Wife to Husband

Three Seasons

Mirage

Shut Out

Sound Sleep

Song

Song

Dead Before Death

Sonnet

Bitter For Sweet

Sister Maude

Rest

Sonnet

The First Spring Day

The Convent Threshold

Up-Hill

Devotional Pieces

‘The Love of Christ Which Passeth Knowledge’

‘A Bruised Reed Shall He Not Break’

A Better Resurrection

Advent

The Three Enemies

The One Certainty

Sonnet

Christian and Jew

A Dialogue

Sweet Death

Symbols

‘Consider the Lilies of the Field’

The World

Sonnet

A Testimony

Sleep at Sea

From House to Home

Old and New Year Ditties

Amen

The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems, 1866

The Prince’s Progress

Maiden-Song

Jessie Cameron

Spring Quiet

The Poor Ghost

A Portrait

Dream-Love

Twice

Songs in a Cornfield

A Year’s Windfalls

The Queen of Hearts

One Day

A Bird’s-Eye View

Light Love

A Dream

Sonnet

A Ring Posy

Beauty Is Vain

Lady Maggie

What Would I Give?

The Bourne

Summer

Autumn

The Ghost’s Petition

Memory

A Royal Princess

Shall I Forget?

Vanity of Vanities

Sonnet

L. E. L.

Life and Death

Bird or Beast?

Eve

Grown and Flown

A Farm Walk

Somewhere or Other

A Chill

Child’s Talk in April

Gone for Ever

Under the Rose

Devotional Pieces

Despised and Rejected

Long Barren

If Only

Dost Thou Not Care?

Weary in Well-Doing

Martyrs’ Song

After This the Judgement

Good Friday

The Lowest Place

Miscellaneaous Poems, 1848-69

Death’s Chill Between

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848 )

Heart’s Chill Between

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848 )

Repining

(Art And Poetry [The Germ, No.3 ], March 1850)

Sit Down in the Lowest Room

(Macmillan’s Magazine, March. 1864.)

My Friend

(Macmillan’s Magazine, Dec.1864.)

Last Night

(Macmillan’s Magazine, May 1865.)

Consider

(Macmillan’s Magazine, Jan.1866.)

Helen Grey

(Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1866.)

By the Waters of Babylon, B.C.570

(Macmillan’s Magazine, October 1866.)

Seasons

(Macmillan’s Magazine, Dec. 1866.)

Mother Country

(Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1868.)

A Smile and a Sigh

(Macmillan’s Magazine, May 1868.)

Dead Hope

(Macmillan’s Magazine, May 1868.)

Autumn Violets

(Macmillan’s Magazine, November 1868.)

‘They Desire a Better Country’

(Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1869.)

The Offering of the New Law, the One Oblation Once Offered

(Lyra Eucharistica, 1863.)

Conference Between Christ, the Saints, and the Soul

(Lyra Eucharistica, 1863.)

Come Unto Me

(Lyra Eucharistica, Second Edition, 1864.)

Jesus, Do I Love Thee?

(Lyra Eucharistica, Second Edition, 1864.)

I Know You Not

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

‘Before the Paling of the Stars’

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

Easter Even

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

Within the Veil

(Lyra Eucharistica, Second Edition, 1865.)

Paradise: in a Symbol

(Lyra Eucharistica, Second Edition, 1865.)

Amor Mundi

(The Shilling Magazine, 1865.)

Who Shall Deliver Me?

(The Argosy, Feb. 1866.)

If

(The Argosy, March 1866.)

Twilight Night

(The Argosy, March 1866.)

Publisher’s Note

About the Author

About the Editor

WordFire Classics

Foreword

When, in 1862, Macmillan published Christina Rossetti's first collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, the powerful pull of the poet's language and imagery was immediately felt by readers in works including Up-hill, Maude Clare, and In the Round Tower at Jhansi, 8 June 1857, as well as the titular poem.

Goblin Market, in particular, is a work that seems to escape time, the words as fresh and filled with temptation now as they have been for a century and a half.

Rosetti's second collection, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems was published four years later, in 1866, also by Macmillan. This collection, too, deals with matters of temptation and longing and is filled with Rosetti's rich turns of phrase and nearly tactile imagery that invokes all the senses.

I love, for instance, the vision of seagulls pulled by the wind in Sleep at Sea -- White shapes flit to and fro/ From mast to mast;/ They feel the distant tempest/ That nears them fast: and the slow motion of One by one the flowers close,/ Lily and dewy rose/ Shutting their tender petals from the moon... from Twilight Calm. At the end of an afternoon reading these poems together, I come back to the gorgeous temptations in Goblin Market with fresh eyes, visiting again those delectable shopping lists — -- Morns that pass by,/ Fair eves that fly;/ Come buy, come buy:/ Our grapes fresh from the vine,/ Pomegranates full and fine... with a heightened awareness.

In uniting poems from both collections in this volume, editor Victoria Rose celebrates the poet’s rich capability for wordcraft, as well as the ways in which many of Rosetti’s poems merge the real world and that of the supernatural.  Her collection presents the two groups of poems in a new setting that allows readers to better absorb more of Rosetti’s body of work, in addition to appreciating Goblin Market — arguably her best-known poem for modern readers — in a new light.

I hope you enjoy this collection as much as I have, and that you also find new details and delights among the poems within.

—Fran Wilde, January 2023

Goblin Market, and Other Poems, 1862

Goblin Market

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

‘Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpecked cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild freeborn cranberries,

Crabapples, dewberries,

Pineapples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries;—

All ripe together

In summer weather,—

Morns that pass by,

Fair eves that fly;

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine,

Pomegranates full and fine,

Dates and sharp bullaces,

Rare pears and greengages,

Damsons and bilberries,

Taste them and try:

Currants and gooseberries,

Bright-fire-like barberries,

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;

Come buy, come buy.’

Evening by evening

Among the brookside rushes,

Laura bowed her head to hear,

Lizzie veiled her blushes:

Crouching close together

In the cooling weather,

With clasping arms and cautioning lips,

With tingling cheeks and finger tips.

‘Lie close,’ Laura said,

Pricking up her golden head:

‘We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?’

‘Come buy,’ call the goblins

Hobbling down the glen.

‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura,

You should not peep at goblin men.’

Lizzie covered up her eyes,

Covered close lest they should look;

Laura reared her glossy head,

And whispered like the restless brook:

‘Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

Down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket,

One bears a plate,

One lugs a golden dish

Of many pounds weight.

How fair the vine must grow

Whose grapes are so luscious;

How warm the wind must blow

Through those fruit bushes.’

‘No,’ said Lizzie, ‘No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us,

Their evil gifts would harm us.’

She thrust a dimpled finger

In each ear, shut eyes and ran:

Curious Laura chose to linger

Wondering at each merchant man.

One had a cat’s face,

One whisked a tail,

One tramped at a rat’s pace,

One crawled like a snail,

One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,

One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.

She heard a voice like voice of doves

Cooing all together:

They sounded kind and full of loves

In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck

Like a rush-imbedded swan,

Like a lily from the beck,

Like a moonlit poplar branch,

Like a vessel at the launch

When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen

Turned and trooped the goblin men,

With their shrill repeated cry,

‘Come buy, come buy.’

When they reached where Laura was

They stood stock still upon the moss,

Leering at each other,

Brother with queer brother;

Signaling each other,

Brother with sly brother.

One set his basket down,

One reared his plate;

One began to weave a crown

Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown

(Men sell not such in any town);

One heaved the golden weight

Of dish and fruit to offer her:

‘Come buy, come buy,’ was still their cry.

Laura stared but did not stir,

Longed but had no money:

The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste

In tones as smooth as honey,

The cat-faced purr’d,

The rat-faced spoke a word

Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;

One parrot-voiced and jolly

Cried ‘Pretty Goblin’ still for ‘Pretty Polly;’—

One whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:

‘Good folk, I have no coin;

To take were to purloin:

I have no copper in my purse,

I have no silver either,

And all my gold is on the furze

That shakes in windy weather

Above the rusty heather.’

‘You have much gold upon your head,’

They answered all together:

‘Buy from us with a golden curl.’

She clipped a precious golden lock,

She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,

Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:

Sweeter than honey from the rock,

Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,

Clearer than water flowed that juice;

She never tasted such before,

How should it cloy with length of use?

She sucked and sucked and sucked the more

Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;

She sucked until her lips were sore;

Then flung the emptied rinds away

But gathered up one kernel stone,

And knew not was it night or day

As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate

Full of wise upbraidings:

‘Dear, you should not stay so late,

Twilight is not good for maidens;

Should not loiter in the glen

In the haunts of goblin men.

Do you not remember Jeanie,

How she met them in the moonlight,

Took their gifts both choice and many,

Ate their fruits and wore their flowers

Plucked from bowers

Where summer ripens at all hours?

But ever in the noonlight

She pined and pined away;

Sought them by night and day,

Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;

Then fell with the first snow,

While to this day no grass will grow

Where she lies low:

I planted daisies there a year ago

That never blow.

You should not loiter so.’

‘Nay, hush,’ said Laura:

‘Nay, hush, my sister:

I ate and ate my fill,

Yet my mouth waters still;

Tomorrow night I will

Buy more:’ and kissed her:

‘Have done with sorrow;

I’ll bring you plums tomorrow

Fresh on their mother twigs,

Cherries worth getting;

You cannot think what figs

My teeth have met in,

What melons icy-cold

Piled on a dish of gold

Too huge for me to hold,

What peaches with a velvet nap,

Pellucid grapes without one seed:

Odorous indeed must be the mead

Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink

With lilies at the brink,

And sugar-sweet their sap.’

Golden head by golden head,

Like two pigeons in one nest

Folded in each other’s wings,

They lay down in their curtained bed:

Like two blossoms on one stem,

Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,

Like two wands of ivory

Tipped with gold for awful kings.

Moon and stars gazed in at them,

Wind sang to them lullaby,

Lumbering owls forbore to fly,

Not a bat flapped to and fro

Round their rest:

Cheek to cheek and breast to breast

Locked together in one nest.

Early in the morning

When the first cock crowed his warning,

Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,

Laura rose with Lizzie:

Fetched in honey, milked the cows,

Aired and set to rights the house,

Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,

Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,

Next churned butter, whipped up cream,

Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;

Talked as modest maidens should:

Lizzie with an open heart,

Laura in an absent dream,

One content, one sick in part;

One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,

One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came:

They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;

Reviews for Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems

[dkhiggin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can’t believe I read 300 pages of poetry and actually enjoyed most of it. Because I don’t like poetry. At all.