What Would I Give? Flashcards
What is What Would I Give about? (2 points)
The narrator is conflicted as her desire for love and warmth is at odds with what she believes is a ‘hard and cold and small’ heart
She is spiritually and emotionally isolated and her sense of sin is evident in her yearning to ‘wash the black mark clean’
What is the structure of What Would I Give? (3 points)
Three tercets or three-lined stanzas - may reflect the Holy Trinity
Regular rhyme scheme that forms the pattern AAB, but where the third line is internally rhymed
The metrical rhythm is iambic hexameter
What is the language and imagery of What Would I Give? (3 points)
The speaker is a first person narrator who may be the poet, or at least whose feelings are informed by the poet’s experiences
The tone is sad, weary and conflicted - perhaps a reflection of the periodic depression suffered by Christina Rossetti
The first lines of the three stanzas begin with ‘What I would give ….’ forming a refrain or anaphora and also forming syntactic parallels
What other poems does What Would I Give link to?
Devotional Poems
A Birthday
A Christmas Carol
A Froth on the Face of the Deep
Memory
Twice
Up-Hill
What is the relevant context for What Would I Give?
This poem indicates Rossetti harboured, perhaps, an unhealthy degree of self-hatred and guilt - possibly due to her terminating her two engagements for scrupulous religious reasons
