Poetry Day - Temptation market
Last night in church we read Isaiah 55, and for some reason that made me think of one of Christina Rossetti's most famous poems, Goblin Market (it's the echoes of "come, buy"). I have never featured Goblin Market on this blog because of it's length, but it really is a magnificent poem. It tells the story of two sisters faced with the same temptation, of the fall of one and her eventual rescue of one by the other. The ending makes me weep. I tried to make this poem into an illustrated book for my two older nieces once, but it proved too ambitious for me (I couldn't draw goblins!), so I bought one. You can read the whole poem here (and you get so taken up in the story you hardly notice the length!), but I thought I'd post a few snippets to lure you in.
This is Laura, the sister who later gives in, when catching sight of the goblin men and their enticing fruits:
Laura stretch’d 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.
Then later follows this section describes the relationship of the two sisters:
Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings,
They lay down in their curtain’d bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipp’d with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gaz’d in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
Not a bat flapp’d to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Lock’d together in one nest.
And after Laura has fallen and eaten the fruit, this is Lizzie going out to meet the goblin men, in order to save her sister. Isn't this magnificent?
White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,—
Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone
Lash’d by tides obstreperously,—
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire,—
Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee,—
Like a royal virgin town
Topp’d with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguer’d by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.
Then this is how the story ends. It's beautiful.
Days, weeks, months, years
Afterwards, when both were wives
With children of their own;
Their mother-hearts beset with fears,
Their lives bound up in tender lives;
Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time:
Would talk about the haunted glen,
The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits like honey to the throat
But poison in the blood;
(Men sell not such in any town):
Would tell them how her sister stood
In deadly peril to do her good,
And win the fiery antidote:
Then joining hands to little hands
Would bid them cling together,
“For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”