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The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti

A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump

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237

The last look.

Her face was like an opening rose,
So bright to look upon;
But now it is like fallen snows,
As cold, as dead, as wan.
Heaven lit with stars is more like her
Than is this empty crust;
Deaf, dumb and blind it cannot stir
But crumbles back to dust.
No flower be taken from her bed
For me, no lock be shorn;
I give her up, the early dead,
The dead, the newly born:
If I remember her, no need
Of formal tokens set;
Of hollow token lies, indeed,
No need, if I forget.