Browse 6 quotations connecting Christina Rossetti with Positive, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include Advent — Christina Rossetti, The First Spring Day — Christina Rossetti, Another Spring — Christina Rossetti. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include Advent — Christina Rossetti, The First Spring Day — Christina Rossetti, Another Spring — Christina Rossetti.
“The watch is long betimes and late, The prize is slow to win.”
The devotional poem acknowledges prolonged waiting and delayed fulfillment directly, making patience meaningful precisely because the hoped-for result is slow.
Source note: “Advent,” in the devotional section of Goblin Market and Other Poems; Project Gutenberg #16950. The watch is explicitly Christian expectation of Christ, not a secular promise that persistence guarantees a prize.
“Yet count we not His promise slack, But watch and wait for Him.”
The speakers continue waiting despite delay because they interpret the promise through faith, combining endurance with explicitly religious expectation.
Source note: “Advent,” Project Gutenberg #16950. 'His' refers to Christ; the line remains Christian devotional poetry rather than being generalized into an evidence-free guarantee about outcomes.
“I'd use to-day that cannot last, Be glad to-day and sing.”
Awareness that another spring is not guaranteed turns attention toward using the present day rather than postponing every form of gladness.
Source note: “Another Spring,” Project Gutenberg #16950. The stanza begins conditionally—'If I might see another Spring'—so the present-focused conclusion grows from mortality and uncertainty.
“There is no time like Spring, When life's alive in everything.”
Spring is praised as a concentrated moment of visible renewal, when growth in plants and birds makes seasonal change feel immediate and abundant.
Source note: “Spring,” in Goblin Market and Other Poems; Project Gutenberg #16950. The surrounding poem also stresses that spring passes and that spring-life is born to die.
“The sap will surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate.”
After earlier doubt, the poem turns to seasonal signs that arrive at different speeds, using delayed spring as an image of hope that can outlast uncertainty.
Source note: “The First Spring Day,” Project Gutenberg #16950. The stanza continues into explicitly spiritual hope about renewal in this world or the world to come.
“So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come.”
The speaker insists on eventual spring while leaving its fulfillment open between earthly renewal and a religious hope beyond this life.
Source note: “The First Spring Day,” Project Gutenberg #16950. The alternative 'world to come' makes the Christian eschatological dimension explicit.