When we think of Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), “reserved” is not generally the first modifier that springs to mind. Like the speaker in her famous Christmas poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Rossetti seems, as a poet, all too willing to “give [her] heart.” This poetic heart behaves, habitually, more “like a singing bird” than like a creature seeking cover. Its thin skin is its most prominent characteristic. We imagine it as a thing exposed to all the emotional elements, not likely to survive. 
 
Yet today’s Poem of the Day gives us a coy speaker whose heart has gone into hibernation. At least, it has shrouded itself in layers of winter clothing. It has learned to play hard-to-get. The ebb and flow of the stanzas, from the initial tight control of the opening sestet with its abbacc rhymes, to the open floodgate of the long second stanza, and back again, echoes the speaker’s feint and retreat, a kind of emotional striptease. I have a secret, she says, but I won’t tell you. Or maybe I don’t have a secret at all. Or maybe I’ll tell you later, when the weather’s better. “Or you may guess.”  

Winter: My Secret
by Christina Rossetti

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I; 
Perhaps some day, who knows? 
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows, 
And you’re too curious: fie! 
You want to hear it? well: 
Only, my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell. 

Or, after all, perhaps there’s none: 
Suppose there is no secret after all, 
But only just my fun. 
Today’s a nipping day, a biting day; 
In which one wants a shawl, 
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: 
I cannot ope to everyone who taps, 
And let the draughts come whistling thro’ my hall; 
Come bounding and surrounding me, 
Come buffeting, astounding me, 
Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all. 
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows 
His nose to Russian snows 
To be pecked at by every wind that blows? 
You would not peck? I thank you for good will, 
Believe, but leave the truth untested still. 

Spring’s an expansive time: yet I don’t trust 
March with its peck of dust, 
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers, 
Nor even May, whose flowers 
One frost may wither thro’ the sunless hours. 

Perhaps some languid summer day, 
When drowsy birds sing less and less, 
And golden fruit is ripening to excess, 
If there’s not too much sun nor too much cloud, 
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud, 
Perhaps my secret I may say, 
Or you may guess. 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.