| Christina Rossetti was one of the earliest succesful women poets. Of Italian heritage she lived in London most of her life. Her most famous collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, appeared in 1862, when she was 31. It received widespread critical praise, establishing her as the main female poet of the time. Her brother was the famous artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti - one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of artists. She was ambivalent about women's suffrage, but many scholars have identified feminist themes in her poetry. She was opposed to slavery (in the American South), cruelty to animals (in the prevalent practice of animal experimentation), and the exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution. She was prone to bouts of depression and deeply interested in religious devotion. She never married - although had three offers of marriage, all of which she declined. Remember Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann'd: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. Sappho I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh When the dull day is passing by. I sigh at evening, and again I sigh when night brings sleep to men. Oh! it were far better to die Than thus forever mourn and sigh, And in death's dreamless sleep to be Unconscious that none weep for me; Eased from my weight of heaviness, Forgetful of forgetfulness, Resting from care and pain and sorrow Thro' the long night that knows no morrow; Living unloved, to die unknown, Unwept, untended, and alone. | 
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Emily Dickinson is considered to be one the of the most important American poets of the 19th century. Considered an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
| I Died For Beauty I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names. Death Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun – Or rather – He passed us – The Dews drew quivering and chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle – We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity – | 
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| And two modern female poets: American feminist Adrienne Rich At Willard Brook Spirit like water moulded by unseen stone and sandbar, pleats and funnels according to its own submerged necessity -- to the indolent eye pure wilfulness, to the stray pine-needle boiling in that cascade-bent pool a random fury: Law, if that's what's wanted, lies asking to be read in the dried brook-bed. For Example Sometimes you meet an old man whose fist isn't clenched blue-white. Someone like that old poet whose grained palm once travelled the bodies of sick children. Back in the typed line was room for everything: the blue grape hyacinth patch, the voluntary touch of cheek on breast, the ear alert for a changed heartbeat and for other sounds too that live in a typed line: the breath of animals, stopping and starting up of busses, trashfires in empty lots. Attention once given returned again as power. An old man's last few evenings might be inhabited not by a public-- fountains of applause off auditorium benches, tributes read at hotel banquets-- but by reverberations the ear had long desired, accepted and absorbed. The late poem might be written in a night suddenly awake with quiet new sounds as when a searchlight plays against the dark bush-tangle and birds speak in reply.   | And Australian poet GwenHarwood The glass Jar To Vivian Smith A child one summer's evening soaked a glass jar in the reeling sun hoping to keep, when day was done and all the sun's disciples cloaked in dream and darkness from his passion fled, this host, this pulse of light beside his bed. Wrapped in a scarf his monstrance stood ready to bless, to exorcize monsters that whispering would rise nightly from the intricate wood that ringed his bed, to light with total power the holy commonplace of field and flower. He slept. His sidelong violence summoned fiends whose mosaic vision saw his heart entire. Pincer and claw, trident and vampire fang, envenomed with his most secret hate, reached and came near to pierce him in the thicket of his fear. He woke, recalled his jar of light, and trembling reached one hand to grope the mantling scarf away. Then hope fell headlong from its eagle height. Through the dark house he ran, sobbing his loss, to the last clearing that he dared not cross: the bedroom where his comforter lay in his rival's fast embrace and faithless would not turn her face from the gross violence done to her. Love's proud executants played from a score no child could read or realize. Once more to bed, and to worse dreams he went. A ring of skeletons compelled his steps with theirs. His father held fiddle and bow, and scraped assent to the malignant ballet. The child dreamed this dance perpetual, and waking screamed fresh morning to his window-sill. As ravening birds began their song the resurrected sun, whose long triumph through flower-brushed fields would fill night's gulfs and hungers, came to wink and laugh in a glass jar beside a crumpled scarf. So the loved other is held for mortal comfort, and taken, and the spirit's light dispelled as it falls from its dream to the deep to harrow heart's prison so heart may waken to peace in the paradise of sleep. Click to set custom HTML
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