Poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti

A Birthday

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. 

1. The Lambs of Grasmere, 1860
2. Song (O roses for the flush of youth)
3. In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857
4. Song (Two doves upon the selfsame branch)
5. A Peal of Bells

Aleister Crowley A Birthday ("Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years")

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