Today’s Poem of the Day gives us a coy speaker whose heart has gone into hibernation. At least, it has shrouded itself in layers of winter clothing.
When we think of Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), “reserved” is not generally the first modifier that springs to mind. Like the speaker in her famous Christmas poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Rossetti seems, as a poet, all too willing to “give [her] heart.” This poetic heart behaves, habitually, more “like a singing bird” than like a creature seeking cover. Its thin skin is its most prominent characteristic. We imagine it as a thing exposed to all the emotional elements, not likely to survive.
Yet today’s Poem of the Day gives us a coy speaker whose heart has gone into hibernation. At least, it has shrouded itself in layers of winter clothing. It has learned to play hard-to-get. The ebb and flow of the stanzas, from the initial tight control of the opening sestet with its abbacc rhymes, to the open floodgate of the long second stanza, and back again, echoes the speaker’s feint and retreat, a kind of emotional striptease. I have a secret, she says, but I won’t tell you. Or maybe I don’t have a secret at all. Or maybe I’ll tell you later, when the weather’s better. “Or you may guess.”
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