Poem

A BIRTHDAY
Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent 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 daïs 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 grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.



Analysis
The poem is composed of two stanzas and every stanza is composed of eight lines. The first and third line of first stanza is a run-on-line because there is no punctuation mark. Second line and 4th – 8th line, and each line of second stanza are an end-stopped line because it is ended by punctuation mark meaning that we have to stop a moment to take breath at the end of every line.
Poem “A Birthday” at glance I think Christina Rossetti speaks about love. She was pleasant because she had found her love coming to her life. She describes her pleasure with “a singing birth”, “water’d shoot”, “apple-tree”, and “rainbow shell”. Due to her “love” come to her, that’s way, she gets new born of her love which she says “A Birthday”. Then, what does Love here mean? And what Birthday does she get?
Here, I try to describe beyond meaning by analyzing every line of Christina’s poem. In the first stanza I find three similes which she compares her heart with something natural? First line, she compares her heart with a singing bird. It implies that she gets happiness and has energy like a bird when it pushes its energy to sing which its sound can bring happiness for hearer. Second lines, she implies herself as she is just born, she uses words “water’s shoot”. Third and fourth line, she expresses her feeling with an apple-tree whose branches are bent with burden of fruit, it means that she is in happy condition. Fifth and sixth line, she compares her heart with rainbow shell in the halcyon sea, I guess everything is good according to her. Seventh and eight line, is a conclusion on the previous lines, she is happier than all things she has just compared because of someone or something she loves has come to her. Ninth and tenth line, she uses “dais” as symbol of her love. She tells that dais has just been built. She informs how she builds her love. The next lines, she begins describing how the dais being built. The carving will never go away; it will stand forever as her love. The last two lines “because the birthday of my life is come, my love is come too” brings meaning of the title of this poem. The birthday here is not the real birthday. A birthday symbolizes new beginning and new birth which she called love as her faith of something. According to my understanding, the speaker of this poem is a female, just seems like a woman who finally found something or someone who makes her happy.