Uphill - Christina Rossetti

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BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

—Christina Rossetti, full name Christina Georgina Rossetti, 

—pseudonym Ellen Alleyne (born Dec. 5, 1830, London, Eng.—died Dec. 29, 1894, London), one of the most important of English women poets both in range and quality.

—She excelled in works of fantasy, in poems for children, and in religious poetry.

—LIFE

—Christina was the youngest child of Gabriele Rossetti and was the sister of the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 

—In 1850, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ.

—In 1853, when the Rossetti family was in financial difficulties, Christina helped her mother keep a school at Frome, Somerset, but it was not a success, and in 1854 the pair returned to London, where Christina’s father died.

—In straitened circumstances, Christina entered on her life work of companionship to her mother, devotion to her religion, and the writing of her poetry.

—She was a firm High Church Anglican, and in 1850 she broke her engagement to the artist James Collinson, an original member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, because he had become a Roman Catholic.

—For similar reasons she rejected Charles Bagot Cayley in 1864, though a warm friendship remained between them.

—WORKS

—In 1862 Christina published Goblin Market and Other Poems and in 1866 The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems, both with frontispiece and decorations by her brother Dante Gabriel.

—These two collections, which contain most of her finest work, established her among the poets of her day. The stories in her first prose work, Commonplace and Other Short Stories (1870), are of no great merit, but Sing-Song: a Nursery Rhyme Book (1872; enlarged 1893), with illustrations by Arthur Hughes, takes a high place among children’s books of the 19th century.

—In 1871 Christina was stricken by Graves’ disease, a thyroid disorder that marred her appearance and left her life in danger.

—She accepted her affliction with courage and resignation, sustained by religious faith, and she continued to publish, issuing one collection of poems in 1875 and A Pageant and Other Poems in 1881. But after the onset of her illness she mostly concentrated on devotional prose writings. 

—Time Flies (1885), a reading diary of mixed verse and prose, is the most personal of these works. Christina was considered a possible successor to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as poet laureate, but she developed a fatal cancer in 1891. 

—New Poems (1896), published by her brother, contained unprinted and previously uncollected poems.

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Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

   Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

   A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

   You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

   Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

   They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

   Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

   Yea, beds for all who come.

— Acknowledgment:

The content above is published for educational purpose with due acknowledgment to Encyclopedia Britannica .