I love anything Christina Rossetti (English Victorian poetress; 1830~1894) ever wrote. This is, perhaps my favorite piece of hers:
A Birthday
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.
(November 18, 1857)
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