Featured Poem: Sonnets are full of love by Christina Rossetti

Today's Featured Poem is Sonnets are full of love by Christina Rossetti, which appears in her collection A Pageant and Other Poems. 

The poem, like the collection, is dedicated to her mother. Rossetti was educated at home by her parents, and her mother in particular had a strong role to pay in her development as a writer. It's said that before she had even learned to write, Rossetti had dictated her first story to her mother.

Sonnets are full of love

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.

Christina Rossetti