A Birthday
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Today’s poem by Christina Rossetti celebrates love’s joyful arrival, using vivid images of fruit, silk, and sea to express the happiness of a birthday of life and love.
Today’s poem for June 12, 2026, is “A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti. My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered 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. Rossetti turns joy into images you can almost touch: fruit, silk, gold, and sea light. It is a short poem about love arriving with the force of a new life beginning.
