Instructions 

The poem is reproduced at the bottom of this article. I highly recommend you read the poem, preferably out loud, and have a think about it for a good 5 minutes or so before looking at my thoughts on it. If you’re a student, you need to flex your muscles at reacting and responding to unseen poems.

Overview

I have been known to say some unkind things to classes about Christina Rossetti. What Paul Elmer More calls ‘the sadness of unfulfilled affection‘ can pall when you’re exposed to too much of it at once.¹

This doesn’t prevent me from respecting her work very much, and this – with its very modern themes – is one of my favourites of hers.

The speaker seems to be getting close to her emotional limit in trying to deal with a man’s unwanted attention. This might be why James Sambrook suggests the poem has ‘a slightly laboured playfulness’.² You would be laboured too, if someone wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer …

Analysis and Commentary

As a rule, we should be wary of definitely stating that a poem is autobiographical. As A-Level Literature students, though, I think it’s perfectly sound – desirable even – to flex our AO3 (Context) muscles by saying so when something seems to reflect or be influenced by the author’s biography.

In this case, we certainly know that Rossetti broke off one engagement and turned down a second proposal. A third man, John Brett ‘is believed to be the rejected admirer’ addressed in this ‘forthright’ poem.³

So. 

The poem is structured as one-side of a dialogue, perhaps reacting in the first line to something ‘John’ has said. The rest is (as always, with a first person persona) subjective, with lots of implied commentary on John’s words and actions. The beginning of the fourth stanza suggests a response to some real-time objection to her highly-controlled rant.

Both ending in rhetorical questions, the first two stanzas reflect a growing impatience with John’s refusal to bow out gracefully. There’s an insistence in the repetition of the superlative adverb, ‘never’, which suggests that the persona has decided not to spare John’s feelings any longer. There’s no question of allowing misunderstanding or any shade of grey into the situation, even if for convention or politeness. We get a sense of how tedious John is through more repetition – the third line of each stanza alliterates ‘w’ for emphasis. Couple that with the verb ‘haunt’, and we can see how unwelcome his attentions are.

There’s an exaggerated politeness about ‘pray’ in stanza three,

It adds a bit more acidity to the persona’s words when coupled with the implication that John is pathetic, to be taken on by other women out of ‘pity’.

We might think that the speaker strikes a more conciliatory tone with each of the next three stanzas beginning with a soft imperative, ‘let’. But again, she puts words in John’s mouth by suggesting he has, or will, call her ‘false’, supported by her offer to ‘wink at your untruth’. Contextually, this is a strong accusation. It’s clear that no compromise is available, which makes the offer of ‘hearty’ friendship nothing more than a face-saving device for John.

Metrically, the persona has stayed in cool control of her feelings throughout the poem, perhaps suggesting that this calm and studied put-down has been long-rehearsed. However, the stanza-spanning enjambment which leads into the final verse is a slip. We might read the disruption of the longer sentence as a momentary lapse, or a ripple of anger.

Rossetti uses commas to devastating effect in the final line.

They slow the pace to isolate and emphasise the finality of ‘no’. We can read the separation of ‘thank you’ as a different kind of finality – perhaps this is the last time the speaker is prepared to be conventionally polite. 

Andrew Sanders suggests that ‘in the shorter poems which deal with secular relationships she explores emotional evasion and the failure of human sympathy’.⁴ On a purely objective basis, it might be difficult to know whether this is an autobiographically charged example of ‘emotional evasion’.

Regardless, the poem contains little to no ‘human sympathy’, and John would be wise to take the hint and move on, quickly and without argument! 

Linked Poem(s)

Christina Rossetti, ‘Twice’: another tale of unrequited love, but this time the woman is rejected!

Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Mrs Quasimodo’, ‘Medusa’, ‘Havisham’: these powerful, frightening women that only Duffy can write all experience rejection …

Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’

John Donne, ‘The Flea’: this and Marvell (above) are metaphysical versions of the type of pressure Rossetti’s persona might be feeling

Can you suggest any other poems which might match this one? Which have I missed?

1. Paul Elmer More, Shelburne Essays (Third Series), (GP Putnam’s & Sons, 1905) ↩︎
2. James Sambrook, ‘The Rossettis and Other Contemporary Poets’, Sphere History of Literature: The Victorians (ed. Arthur Pollard), (Sphere Books, 1987) ↩︎
3. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www.oxforddnb.com] ↩︎
4. Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature (Third Edition), (Oxford University Press, 2003) ↩︎

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Christina Rossetti: No, Thank You, John (1862)

I never said I loved you, John:
        Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
        With always "do" and "pray"?

You know I never loved you, John;			[5]
        No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
        As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
        Pity upon you, if you'd ask:				[10]
And pray don't remain single for my sake
        Who can't perform that task.

I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;
        But then you're mad to take offence
That I don't give you what I have not got:		[15]
        Use your common sense.

Let bygones be bygones:
        Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
        Than answer "Yes" to you.				[20]

Let's mar our pleasant days no more,
        Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at to-day, forget the days before:
        I'll wink at your untruth.

Let us strike hands as hearty friends;			[25]
        No more, no less: and friendship's good:
Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,
        And points not understood

In open treaty. Rise above
        Quibbles and shuffling off and on:			[30]
Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—
        No, thank you, John.