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Article: Rossetti's Goblin Market.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Of the many possible literary models for and influences on Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1859), one obvious source seems to have escaped critical attention: Robert Herrick's "Cherry-ripe" from Hesperides (1648):
Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones; come and buy:
If so be, you ask me where
They do grow? I answer, There,
Where my Julia's lips do smile;
There's the land, or Cherry isle:
Whose plantations fully show
All the year, where cherries grow. (1)
Isolated from the context of rustic life and sensuous fulfillment, the fruitcry of Herrick's merchant "Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, / Full and fair ones; come and buy" provides ...