"Goblin Market" Christina Rosetti

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 answer’d all together:

“Buy from us with a golden curl.”

She clipp’d a precious golden lock,

She dropp’d a tear more rare than pearl,

Then suck’d their fruit globes fair or red

From "Goblin Market" Christina Rosetti

I am working my way through "The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women:  The Tradition in English."  I'm on page 903 with about 1400 pages to go.  I'm not reading every single word; sometimes I skip over an essay and not a few poems.  But even those intrigue me at times.  This poem by Rosetti, published in 1862, caught my interest, and I have read all of it twice and parts of it more than that despite it spanning 13 of the tissue-thin pages of the book.

The etching shown here was used to illustrate the poem when it was printed and was done by Rosetti's brother, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, the founder of the Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood.  In the image, Lizzie is comforting her sister Laura while Laura dreams of visiting the Goblin Market to taste their fruit again.  But the goblins won't show themselves to Laura , and she is dying from the unsatisfied desire.

This poem is pleasantly readable.  The story is a morality tale, but as always it is difficult to understand the original meaning after the span of more than 150 years and a change of continents.  The love of a woman for her sister, even after that sister has strayed from the right path, is beautiful.  Lizzie sacrifices her own purity to save her sister, and like many of the Grimm's stories, no matter how ghastly the images there is a happy ending.

I could use what I learned in the Fantasy and Science Fiction course I took to analyze the imagery here, but I'm not really interested in a deconstruction that would detract from the warm fuzzy pink glow this poem gave me.  But the sexual, religious and filial images are ripe for the picking, pun definitely intended. I enjoyed the irregular meter and the irregular rhyme scheme, as both were a tease.  The flow of the language pulled me along through the forest.  The taunting of the goblins rings in my ears.

I think I'll go read it again.