A Birthday

By Christina Rossetti

“A Birthday” is Christina Rossetti’s 1857 poem about a love so overwhelming that the speaker calls its arrival the true birthday of her life. Its 16 lines move from three natural similes to a throne built of silk, fur, gold, and silver, and the poem first appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine in April 1861.

Our reading is that the poem is about what joy does when words run out. Having admitted that no comparison is big enough, the speaker stops comparing and starts building. The throne she orders is carved in a Christian vocabulary of doves, pomegranates, and peacocks, which leaves her beloved open to being a man, God, or both.

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker is so happy that she cannot find a comparison big enough for her heart. In the first stanza she tries three, a bird singing in its nest, an apple tree bent with fruit, and a bright shell floating on a calm sea, and then admits that her heart is gladder than all of them because her love has come. In the second stanza she stops comparing and starts giving orders, calling for a raised throne of silk and down, hung with fur and purple cloth and carved with doves, pomegranates, peacocks, grapes, and lilies in gold and silver. She ends by declaring that the day her love arrived is the real birthday of her life.

The poem never says who the beloved is, and its images point two ways at once: toward a human lover and toward God.

The Poem

The text below follows the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems (1913), which reprints the contents of Rossetti’s 1862 collection.

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset 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 dais 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.

Background

Rossetti wrote “A Birthday” in November 1857, when she was 26. Scholars have long pointed out that she was not known to be in love with anyone at the time, and that the poems on either side of it in her manuscript notebook are gloomy and regretful. Her engagement to the painter James Collinson had ended in 1850, and she would later turn down the scholar Charles Cayley, partly on religious grounds, so the poem’s rapture has no obvious cause in her life.

The poem reached print with help from her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who encouraged the publisher Alexander Macmillan to take her work. Macmillan’s Magazine printed “Up-Hill” in February 1861, “A Birthday” in April 1861, and “An Apple-Gathering” that August. Macmillan then published Goblin Market and Other Poems in 1862, Rossetti’s first major collection, with illustrations by Dante Gabriel. In that book, “A Birthday” sits directly before “Remember,” a sonnet in which the speaker asks her lover to forget her if remembering would make him sad.

Analysis and Themes

“A Birthday” is easy to read as a simple love song, and that reading is true as far as it goes. Our argument is that the poem is really about the limits of language in the face of joy. The speaker runs out of comparisons, turns to making things instead, and fills what she makes with symbols that refuse to settle whether her love is human or divine.

Three Similes That Fall Short on Purpose

Each simile in the first stanza shows a living thing at its fullest. The bird is not searching or migrating but singing in its nest; the apple tree is so loaded that its boughs bend; the shell is carried on a sea so calm it is called halcyon. These are images of settled abundance, not longing. Rossetti opens three of the first five lines with “My heart is like,” then breaks the pattern at line 7: “My heart is gladder than all these.” The fourth “My heart” is not a comparison at all but a ranking, and it ranks every comparison as too small. The stanza is built to fail, and its failure is the proof of how much the speaker feels.

When Words Run Out, the Speaker Builds

The second stanza changes mood from description to command: “Raise,” “Hang,” “Carve,” “Work.” It also changes material, from things that grow to things that are made and that last: silk, fur, dye, gold, and silver. The fruit of the first stanza comes back, but transformed. The apple tree bending under real fruit gives way to pomegranates carved in wood and grapes worked in gold. A joy this large, the poem suggests, does not want only to be felt. It wants a monument, something fixed in costly and lasting materials, the way people build altars and thrones for what they mean to honor forever.

A Throne Carved in Sacred Symbols

Rossetti was a devout Anglican, and the decorations she orders read like a catalog of Christian emblems. The dove stands for the Holy Spirit and for peace; the pomegranate, full of seeds, for resurrection and the Church; the peacock, whose flesh was once thought never to decay, for immortality; purple for kingship and for Christ’s Passion; grapes for the Eucharist; and the lily of the fleur-de-lys for purity. Several of these images, including doves, pomegranates, and vines, also run through the Song of Songs, which Christian readers traditionally took as a love song between Christ and the soul. Read this way, the dais is an altar, “my love” is Christ, and “the birthday of my life” is spiritual rebirth.

Yet the first stanza’s fruit, nests, and singing are as bodily and earthly as any lover’s poem. Rossetti never names the beloved, and the omission lets both readings stand at full strength. The poem does not ask readers to choose between a woman in love and a soul meeting God; it describes a joy that feels the same either way.

The One Unshadowed Love Poem

Rossetti’s love poems are usually about waiting, loss, or renunciation, and the book that collected “A Birthday” is full of lovers who are dead, false, or forgotten. That context is what makes this poem land so hard. Even its grammar refuses to hedge: “my love is come,” rather than “has come,” describes not a passing event but a state that has arrived and stays. Placed directly before “Remember,” the poem reads like a moment of full sunlight in a volume otherwise lit by dusk, and its rarity in her work is part of its force.

Form and Technique

“A Birthday” has 16 lines in two eight-line stanzas, or octaves, and each stanza rhymes ABCBDEFE, so the rhymes fall on the even lines. The meter is iambic tetrameter, four rising beats to a line: “my HEART is LIKE a SING-ing BIRD.” The first stanza chimes more than the scheme shows, since “apple-tree,” “sea,” and “me” share the same long vowel and “these” nearly joins them. The sound keeps circling back to “me,” just as the speaker’s thoughts keep returning to the beloved’s arrival.

The two stanzas run on different engines. The first uses anaphora, the repeated opening “My heart is like,” to pile up similes. The second opens four lines with a stressed verb, “RAISE me,” “HANG it,” “CARVE it,” and “WORK it,” flipping the first foot of the line so that each command lands hard. The refrain ties the halves together: the first stanza ends “Because my love is come to me,” and the second stretches that line across two, adding “the birthday of my life” and doubling “is come,” so that the closing declaration sounds both larger and more final.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry the poem from its failed similes to its crowning declaration.

My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Lines 7 to 8

The turn of the first stanza. After three comparisons, the speaker declares them all too small, and that admission sends the poem looking for something grander.

Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Lines 11 to 12

The heart of the poem’s sacred reading. Doves, pomegranates, and peacocks were familiar Christian emblems of the Spirit, resurrection, and eternal life, and the peacock’s “hundred eyes” add a note of watchful splendor.

Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Lines 15 to 16

The close, and the source of the title. Calling this day “the birthday of my life” recasts the arrival of love as a second, truer beginning, whether that means falling in love or being born again in faith.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem’s 16 lines.

Joy beyond words. The poem measures happiness by the failure of language to hold it, moving from simile to command once comparison gives out.

Human and divine love. The unnamed beloved and the Christian imagery let the poem be read as romantic love, love of God, or a joy in which the two cannot be told apart.

Rebirth. The title’s “birthday” is not a date on the calendar but a new beginning, the moment the speaker feels her life truly started.

Making feeling last. The throne of gold, silver, and carved wood turns a passing emotion into something built to endure, a monument to a single day.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Rossetti’s poem.

What Is “A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti About?

It is about overwhelming joy at the arrival of love. The speaker compares her heart to a bird, a fruit tree, and a shell, decides none of them is enough, and orders a jeweled throne to celebrate what she calls the birthday of her life.

When Was “A Birthday” Written?

Rossetti wrote it in November 1857. It was first published in Macmillan’s Magazine in April 1861 and collected the next year in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

Is “A Birthday” About God or a Lover?

It can be read either way, and the poem never settles the question. The first stanza’s images suggest human love, while the doves, pomegranates, peacocks, and purple of the second stanza are traditional Christian symbols that point toward love of God and spiritual rebirth.

What Is the Mood of “A Birthday”?

The mood is ecstatic and celebratory. The quick iambic rhythm, the rush of similes, and the string of excited commands all convey a joy that is unusual in Rossetti’s often melancholy poetry.

What Is the Rhyme Scheme of “A Birthday”?

Each eight-line stanza rhymes ABCBDEFE, so the rhymes fall on the even lines. Both stanzas end on the rhyme word “me,” which keeps returning the poem to the speaker and her beloved.

Glossary

Several words in the poem are rare or archaic.

• watered shoot (line 2): A young branch that is well supplied with water, and so green and thriving.
• thickset (line 4): Growing close together in great numbers.
• halcyon (line 6): Calm and peaceful. The halcyon was a mythical bird, identified with the kingfisher, said to calm the sea while it nested.
• dais (line 9): A raised platform for a throne or a seat of honor.
• down (line 9): Soft, fine feathers, used to stuff cushions.
• vair (line 10): A costly fur from the gray-and-white winter coat of a squirrel, used to line the robes of medieval nobility.
• fleurs-de-lys (line 14): Stylized lily emblems, long associated with French royalty and, in Christian art, with purity.

In Popular Culture

“A Birthday” has been one of Rossetti’s most often set and imitated poems.

Hubert Parry set the poem as the song “My heart is like a singing bird” in 1909. It was first sung at London’s Bechstein Hall on November 16, 1909, and published in 1918 in the tenth set of his English Lyrics.

Dozens of other composers have set it, including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Frederic Cowen, and the American composer Miriam Gideon included it as the second song of her 1983 cycle Wing’d Hour.

The poem was popular enough in Rossetti’s lifetime to be parodied: an 1888 comic magazine printed a send-up called “An Unexpected Pleasure.”

Related Poems

These poems share the joy, the imagery, or the sacred tradition behind “A Birthday.”

• Remember by Christina Rossetti: The sonnet printed right after “A Birthday” in Goblin Market and Other Poems, where love turns to loss and a request to be forgotten.
• A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns: Love overflowing into a string of similes because plain statement cannot hold the feeling.
• How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Victorian love poem that measures human devotion until it reaches toward the divine.
• Love (III) by George Herbert: The devotional poem in which Love is God welcoming the soul, the tradition behind the sacred reading of “A Birthday.”