"Now did you mark a falcon, Sister dear, sister dear, Flying toward my window In the morning cool and clear? With jingling bells about her neck. But what beneath her wing? It may have been a ribbon, Or it may have been a ring." "I marked a falcon swooping At the break of day; And for your love, my sister dove, I 'frayed the thief away." "Or did you spy a ruddy hound, Sister fair and tall, Went snuffing round my garden bound, Or crouched by my bower wall. With a silken leash about his neck; But in his mouth may be A chain of gold and silver links, Or a letter writ to me?" "I heard a hound, highborn sister, Stood baying at the moon; I rose and drove him from your wall, Lest you should wake too soon." "Or did you meet a pretty page, Sat swinging on the gate; Sat whistling, whistling like a bird-- Or may be slept too late-- With eaglets broidered on his cap, And eaglets on his glove? If you had turned his pockets out, You had found some pledge of love." "I met him at this daybreak, Scarce the east was red; Lest the creaking gate should anger you, I packed him off to bed." "Oh patience, sister. Did you see A young man tall and strong, Swift-footed to uphold the right And to uproot the wrong, Come home across the desolate sea To woo me for his wife? And in his heart my heart is locked, And in his life my life." "I met a nameless man, sister. Who loitered round our door; I said: 'Her husband loves her much. And yet she loves him more.'" "Fie, sister, fie; a wicked lie, A lie, a wicked lie. I have none other love but him, Nor will have till I die; And you have turned him from our door, And stabbed him with a lie. I will go seek him through the world In sorrow till I die." "Go seek in sorrow, sister, And find in sorrow too; If thus you shame our father's name, My curse go forth with you." But such writings, exquisite as they are, are but the outworks and bastions of the inner life. One could almost wish that Christina Rossetti were further removed by time and space, and were passed beyond the region of letters, biographies, and personal memoirs, which before long will possibly begin "to tear her heart before the crowd." Nowadays, in the excessive zest for personal information, which received such shameful incentives from Carlyle, and still more shameless encouragement from his biographers, we may thank God, as Tennyson did, that there are yet poets of whom we know as little as we know of Shakespeare, about whom even the utmost diligence of researchers has disinterred but a handful of sordid and humiliating facts.