A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd 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.
A Ninth Birthday by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Three times thrice hath winter's rough white wing Crossed and curdled wells and streams with ice Since his birth whose praises love would sing Three times thrice.
Earth nor sea bears flower nor pearl of price Fit to crown the forehead of my king, Honey meet to please him, balm, nor spice.
Love can think of nought but love to bring Fit to serve or do him sacrifice Ere his eyes have looked upon the spring Three times thrice.
Three times thrice the world has fallen on slumber, Shone and waned and withered in a trice, Frost has fettered Thames and Tyne and Humber Three times thrice,
Fogs have swoln too thick for steel to slice, Cloud and mud have soiled with grime and umber Earth and heaven, defaced as souls with vice,
Winds have risen to wreck, snows fallen to cumber, Ships and chariots, trapped like rats or mice, Since my king first smiled, whose years now number Three times thrice.
Three times thrice, in wine of song full-flowing, Pledge, my heart, the child whose eyes suffice, Once beheld, to set thy joy-bells going Three times thrice.
Not the lands of palm and date and rice Glow more bright when summer leaves them glowing, Laugh more light when suns and winds entice.
Noon and eve and midnight and cock-crowing, Child whose love makes life as paradise, Love should sound your praise with clarions blowing.
