Earthly and Heavenly Love Jessica Lever 11th Grade

Rossetti famously defied Victorian ideals by ending her engagement to James Collinson in 1850 on religious grounds, as she was a devout Tractarian and he had become a Roman Catholic. Her faith coloured every day of her life, even supposedly causing a nervous breakdown in 1845 through religious guilt. This would suggest that religion would be at the forefront of all of Rossetti’s work, important as it was to her, and therefore love may have been given heavenly qualities in her poetry to demonstrate its greatness at its pinnacle.

The “dais of silk and down” in A Birthday is the most obvious religious reference in the poem, a dais being a raised platform upon which altars or lecterns would be placed on in some churches. The narrator requests it, which could be interpreted as a request of God so that they may worship Him or spread his Word. The love seen here may be love for God, suggested by the mention of “boughs…bent with thickset fruit”, which may be referencing the lush Garden of Eden – a “trees bearing fruit” are mentioned in Genesis 1:3 – but A Birthday details beautiful natural imagery in the first stanza, but the beautiful imagery of the “halcyon sea” and “rainbow shell” appear unobtainable and removed from Rossetti’s...