Poetry Friday - 15

Last year Doctor Who gave me references to Shakespeare and Eliot (in "The Shakespeare Code" and "The Lazarus Experiment" respectively), this year (last week) it's given me Christina Rossetti, specifically the last four lines of this extract:

Goblin Market

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."
Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"

"Midnight" was a brilliantly acted story: I consider David Tennant a genius (and I don't use that word lightly) but Lesley Sharp matched him in this episode. The plot was a bit meh, but the acting was fantastic, and the use of the lines from Rossetti was spot on.

Anyway, the poem can be read in its entirety here.

And this week's Poetry Friday round-up is at Semicolon.