Poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti

An Apple Gathering

I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree,
  And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
  I found no apples there.

With dangling basket all along the grass
  As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbors mocked me while they saw me pass
  So empty-handed back.

Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
  Their heaped-up basket teased me like a jeer;
Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
  Their mother's home was near.

Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full,
  A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
A voice talked with her through the shadows cool
  More sweet to me than song.

Ah, Willie, Willie, was my love less worth
  Than apples with their green leaves piled above?
I counted rosiest apples on the earth
  Of far less worth than love.

So once it was with me you stooped to talk
  Laughing and listening in this very lane:
To think that by this way we used to walk
  We shall not walk again!

I let my neighbors pass me, ones and twos
  And groups; the latest said the night grew chill,
And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews
  Fell fast I loitered still.

1. The Lambs of Grasmere, 1860
2. A Peal of Bells
3. Fata Morgana
4. In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857
5. Confluents

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