Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Miscellaneous Poems. I. “Yea, I Have a Goodly Heritage”

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)

MY vineyard that is mine I have to keep,

Pruning for fruit the pleasant twigs and leaves.

Tend thou thy cornfield: one day thou shalt reap

In joy thy ripened sheaves.

Or if thine be an orchard, graft and prop

Food-bearing trees each watered in its place:

Or if a garden, let it yield for crop

Sweet herbs and herb of grace.—

But if my lot be sand where nothing grows?—

Nay, who hath said it? Tune a thankful psalm:

For tho’ thy desert bloom not as the rose,

It yet can rear thy palm.