My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is a watered shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit.

--From A Birthday

From the sensuous, deliciously scary, and popular Goblin Market to the delicate and musical Sing-Song, Christina Rossetti's verses feature earthy, almost tactile images. As the sole woman among the Pre-Raphaelites, her work has a unique feminine perspective. Among the selections by Jan Marsh, author of an acclaimed biography of Christina and her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are At Home, Confluents, Maude Clare, and Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims.