A Birthday
Goblin Market and Other Poems, 1862
My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a watered shoot;My heart is like an appletreeWhose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;My heart is like a rainbow shellThat paddles in a halcyon sea;My heart is gladder than all theseBecause 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 lifeIs come, my love is come to me.