[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The Key-Note

Christina Rossetti

Where are the songs I used to know,
  Where are the notes I used to sing?
  I have forgotten everything
I used to know so long ago;
Summer has followed after Spring;
  Now Autumn is so shrunk and sere,
I scarcely think a sadder thing
  Can be the Winter of my year.

Yet Robin sings thro’ Winter’s rest,
  When bushes put their berries on;
  While they their ruddy jewels don,
He sings out of a ruddy breast;
The hips and haws and ruddy breast
  Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie,
They break and cheer the unlovely rest
  Of Winter’s pause—and why not I?
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From A Pageant and Other Poems | 1881
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.