Christina Rossetti The sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Christina Rossetti’s work was influenced by the doctrines of this artistic movement. Her poetry is simple in rhyme scheme and choice of words, conveying the meaning of her poems to the reader with much clarity. The aforementioned characteristics of her poem do not take away from the vibrancy of her descriptions, as she used symbolism to help her paint vivid images in the minds of her audience. Adding to that, she was a devout Christian, and so her poems take on a highly religious, spiritual, and emotional theme, removed from material wealth and earthly possessions. Up-hill Published in 1861, this poem was interpreted as an allegorical conversation about life, death, and heaven between a traveller and a guide. The narrator; also referred to as the traveller, poses eight questions to his/her guide regarding the road ahead. The answers provided are immediate and …show more content…
This was attributed to poor hygiene and a lack of advancement in medicine. Infant mortality was exceptionally high, with births being often fatal for both the mother and her child. In addition, infanticide was a gruesomely common practice owing to a deficiency in pregnancy prevention methods. Rossetti touched upon this contemporary topic in her nursery rhymes book, “Sing-Song”. Despite the expectation of a cheery tone in a nursery rhymes book, a few of the rhymes take a macabre turn when describing a cradle without a baby, for example. “Baby Lies So Fast Asleep” is a short poem in which a mother explains to her surviving child the death of her baby. In keeping with Rossetti’s themes, the mother in the poem uses sleep as a gentler euphemism in place of death. The poem starts off on a melancholy tone, with the death of being an inescapable truth. However, the views of death and the afterlife come soon after with the question in lines