Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Goblin Market and Other Poems. IV. An Apple GatheringChristina Georgina Rossetti (18301894)
I
And wore them all that evening in my hair:
Then in due season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
As I had come I went the self-same track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.
Their heaped-up basket teazed me like a jeer;
Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
Their mother’s home was near.
A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
A voice talked with her through the shadows cool
More sweet to me than song.
Than apples with their green leaves piled above?
I counted rosiest apples on the earth
Of far less worth than love.
Laughing and listening in this very lane:
To think that by this way we used to walk
We shall not walk again!
And groups; the latest said the night grew chill,
And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews
Fell fast I loitered still.