Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' opens with a sensory assault: 'Morning and evening / Maids heard the goblins cry: / Come buy our orchard fruits, / Come buy, come buy.' The poem's rhythmic urgency and vivid catalogue of fruits—'Plump unpecked cherries,' 'Bloom-down-cheeked peaches'—immediately establish a world where temptation is both alluring and dangerous. This volume combines Rossetti's first two published collections, 'Goblin Market and Other Poems' (1862) and 'The Prince's Progress and Other Poems' (1866), along with miscellaneous later works. The catalog subjects list only 'English poetry,' but the excerpts reveal a poet deeply engaged with narrative, devotional reflection, and the natural world.

Narrative and Voice in the Title Poems

The two title poems employ contrasting narrative strategies. 'Goblin Market' uses a third-person, almost ballad-like voice to tell the story of Laura and Lizzie, with dialogue interspersed: 'We must not look at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits.' The poem's swift, irregular meter and internal rhymes create a hypnotic quality. In contrast, 'The Prince's Progress' adopts a more distanced, allegorical tone, opening with 'Till all sweet gums and juices flow.' The excerpts show the Prince's journey is marked by delays and encounters, but the incomplete text leaves his ultimate fate unclear. Rossetti's narrative poems often hinge on a moment of choice or temptation, rendered through sensory detail rather than explicit moralizing.

Devotional and Reflective Strains

Rossetti's devotional pieces, such as 'A Better Resurrection' and 'Advent,' employ a spare, urgent language: 'I have no wit, no words, no tears.' The poems in the 'Devotional Pieces' section of both collections frequently address a divine 'Thou' with intimate directness. In 'The Love of Christ which passeth Knowledge,' the speaker asks, 'What word can reach the weight of love?' The excerpts also include poems like 'The Convent Threshold,' which uses a dramatic monologue form to explore renunciation. These works share with the narrative poems a preoccupation with longing, loss, and the tension between earthly and spiritual desires.

Seasonal Cycles and Natural Detail

Rossetti's nature poems, such as 'A Year's Windfalls' and 'Spring Quiet,' demonstrate a precise eye for seasonal change. In 'A Year's Windfalls,' each month is marked by specific images: 'On the wind of January / Down flits the snow,' 'With the gusts of April / Rich fruit-tree blossoms fall.' The poem 'Summer' contrasts the abundance of the season with the speaker's emotional barrenness: 'Only summer wheat remaineth, / White cakes and bread.' Rossetti often uses natural cycles as a framework for exploring human transience, as in 'Autumn Violets' and 'The First Spring Day.' The recurring motif of wheat, fruit, and flowers links these lyrics to the more famous 'Goblin Market,' where fruit symbolizes both temptation and sustenance.

Readers approaching this volume will find a poet who moves fluidly between fairy-tale narrative, devotional lyric, and seasonal observation. The excerpts suggest that Rossetti's work rewards attention to recurring images—fruit, wheat, sleep, and cold—that carry different meanings across poems. The incomplete nature of the excerpts means that longer narrative arcs, particularly in 'The Prince's Progress,' remain partly obscured, inviting readers to trace how Rossetti develops her themes across the full collection.