31 In an Artist’s Studio (1856/1896)
Christina Rossetti
“In an Artist’s Studio” by Christina Rossetti was written in 1856. However, it was first published posthumously by her brother William Michael Rossetti in the 1896 collection New Poems by Christina Rossetti: Hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected. This collection is available on Google Books. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
In an Artist’s Studio
ONE face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
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A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel—every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
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And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
24 December 1856.
Work Cited
Rossetti, Christina. “In an Artist’s Studio.” New Poems by Christina Rossetti: Hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected, edited by William Michael Rossetti, Macmillan and Co., 1896, p. 114. Google Books, www.google.ca/books/edition/New_Poems_by_Christina_Rossetti/X8QVAAAAYAAJ.
