There's the long wishlist of fruit at the beginning, of course: "Bright-fire-like barberries/ Figs to fill your mouth/Citrons from the South…" reminding us of Christina's Italian ancestry. Many brilliant "set pieces" make selection difficult. Rossetti allows herself the full freedom of her poetic gifts: her visual sense, her musicality, her skill in both narrative and lyric modes. Often read as a poem of renunciation – as perhaps all Rossetti's poems fundamentally are – Goblin Market is also a wonderful fairytale from a writer who was not so far away from her own childhood when she completed it in April 1859. This week's choice is an extract: lines 408–446 from Christina Rossetti's lavishly sensuous masterpiece, Goblin Market.
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