I want to share one of my favorite poems in our curriculum, found in the first-grade recitation list. (Incidentally, I think this was the first poem I ever memorized.)
A Chill
by Christina Rossetti
What can lambkins do
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother,
The careful ewe.
What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother's wing
Till day breaks anew.
If in field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm soft sleeping-place
Found for me!
The charm of this poem lies in its simple language and pastoral themes. Young children love animals and here they are! --under the archaic but easily explained words "lambkins," "ewe," and nestlings."
Not only can a first grader (with some guidance) understand what the poem says, but she can also absorb what the poems means. What six-year-old hasn't wanted to be safe and warm near mother?
"A Chill" becomes more interesting in the context of Christina Rossetti's life and other works of poetry.
Christina Rossetti was born in England in 1830 to an Italian family. She was the youngest of four children, and raised in an intelligent, eccentric, and religious environment. Christina's mother, a former governess, assigned her to read Augustine and Bunyan. As any child might, Christina preferred (and devoured) romances, novels, and poetry including The Arabian Nights and the works of Sir Walter Scott.
Christina and her brother Dante Gabriel were closely related in their opinions of art and aesthetic tastes. Dante Gabriel became a celebrated pre-Raphaelite painter. Christina, with her classical Italian features, was the model for many of his paintings, including the one at the top of the page.
Christina was a prodigy at language. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine, and as a teenager would race her siblings at composing sonnets--for fun! By the age of eighteen, she was a published poet, reaching her pinnacle of poetic success in the early 1860s. At the end of her life, Christina contributed to important scholarship on Italian Renaissance poets Petrarch and Dante.
From the age of 14 until her death in 1894, Christina suffered bouts of serious depression and physical illness. Passionately principled, Christina received three offers of marriage, but rejected her suitors due to (at least ostensibly) religious reasons. Graves’ disease marred her physical beauty in middle age, and she became increasingly reclusive. A devoted Anglo-Catholic, Christina wrote poetry displaying spiritual fervor from an aesthetic and personal point of view.
Christina's poetry is notable for its elegant simplicity, its sense of longing, and its religious overtones. These three themes work together in her poems. The beauty of her language reflects the beauty she saw and experienced. However, her poetry shows that beauty causes both pleasure and pain. Moreover, she describes two kinds of beauty, physical and spiritual. Physical beauty causes immediate pleasure and future pain. Flowers, young love, and attractive features soon fade, leaving longing and regret. On the other hand, spiritual beauty causes immediate pain and future pleasure. A longing for union with God redeems our human desire for beauty, but is painful because death precedes its consummation. Christina Rossetti's poetry shows the tension in her soul between this world and heaven, between pleasure and pain.
With that in mind, read over the poem again. Do you notice the elegant simplicity, sense of longing, and religious overtones described above?
What can lambkins do
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother,
The careful ewe.
What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother's wing
Till day breaks anew.
If in field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm soft sleeping-place
Found for me!
If you are interested in reading more brief and beautiful poems by Christina Rossetti, here are five suggestions.