34 Poetry for Students

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;^10

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 15

Is come, my love is come to me.

Poem Summary.

Lines 1-2:

The speaker opens with a simile, or a figure of

speech expressing the similarity between two seem-

ingly unlike things. Here, she compares her heart

with a “singing bird,” which suggests pure happi-

ness and energy, and herself to a “watered shoot”

in which the bird has nested. A shoot is a young

branch or leaf that develops from a bud. By using

this simile the speaker implies she feels as if she

were newly born, as the title figuratively suggests.

But while a shoot is brought to life by water, the

speaker has come alive with love.

Lines 3-6:

In these lines the speaker continues to search

for the perfect simile to express her love. First she

compares her heart to “an apple tree” whose

branches are so heavy with sensuous, life-giving

fruit that they are “bent.” Next she compares it to

“a rainbow shell,” bright with color and paddling in

the “halcyon,” or peaceful, sea. Each of the similes

in the first six lines tries to describe the speaker’s

emotion in a different way. This frenzied approach

reveals the speaker’s urgent need to express her joy.

Yet the comparisons also share one quality: each is

from nature, implying that love is above all a nat-

ural, and therefore innocent, wonder.

Lines 7-8:

In the last two lines of the first octave, the

speaker decides that none of the similes in fact suf-

fices. Though all are glad images, her “heart is glad-

der than all of these” because “love has come” to

her.

Lines 9-10:

In the second octave, the speaker abandons her

attempt to compare her love with the miracles of

nature. Instead, she commands the listener build her

a “dais,” or a platform built in a hall to honor some-

one. She wants the dais to be lush, layered in “silk

and down” and covered with “vair,” or squirrel fur,

and “purple dies.” This ornate spectacle, we might

guess, is to celebrate her “birthday.” Because her

love has elevated her to such lofty heights, the

splendid dais seems like one fit for royalty. Also

notice the shift in voice from the declarative of the

first stanza to the imperative, or command form, of

the second stanza. The speaker is no longer tenta-

tive, no longer gropes for the proper images. She

now knows what she wants and commands that it

be done.

Lines 11-14:

In these lines the speaker describes exactly

how she would like her dais to be built. It should

be sculpted with “doves” and “peacocks with a hun-

dred eyes,” with “pomegranates,” “gold and silver

grapes” and “silver fleur-de-lys,” or iris, the sym-

bol of French royalty. In contrast with the first

stanza, these images are not directly from nature

but are “carved” representations of natural objects.

Unlike phenomena of nature—like birds, apples,

and shells—these carved renditions do not perish.

Rather, they stand eternal, calling to mind the nat-

ural objects the way Keats’ Grecian urn forever im-

mortalizes youth long passed. Thus, the dais is a

more fitting symbol of the speaker’s love because

it will not perish.

Lines 15-16:

In the final lines, the speaker confirms the

meaning of the poem’s title, which is a metaphor—

or an implied, rather than directly stated, compar-

ison between two things—for the way she feels.

Though it might not be her chronological birthday,

A Birthday

Media

Adaptations

• The songs from a musical adaptation of Goblin
  Marketcan be heard on a CD put out by CDJay
  Records in 1996. The music is by Polly Pen.


• Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite
  Brotherhood(1969) is a BBC film on the life of
  Rossetti’s brother and his circle of fellow artists
  (of whom Rossetti herself was a marginal
  member).