One of the greatest birthday poems in the English language.

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Written during the summer lockdown, the poems tell a story of love and distance, the bond between tradition and modernity, and ultimately convey a message of hope.

In his foreword, Raymond Keene OBE writes, "Poems for Susan functions as an overview of the entire English tradition of poetic creation, in terms of varying style, rhythm, meter, rhyme and subject matter.

While poetry such as this can still be written, civilisation shall not sink, the great battle of the mind shall not be lost, and the rough beast will - along with the passionate intensity of the worst - finally be overcome".

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

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