Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) was an English poet.  Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a famous poet and artist and a founding member of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  The portrait of Christina to the right is his work. Christina posed for some of his other famous paintings also. She wrote many beautiful poems, but the one that that always touched me most is Hurt No Living Thing.

If you are not familiar with it, you should be!

Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.

It is, of course, harder to live up to this when you see something like a cockroach, but a good point to take to heart nevertheless.

Christina Rossetti said other beautiful things too. Here are some of them:

•  Silence is more musical than any song.
• And all the winds go sighing, for sweet things dying.
• Better by far you should forget and smile that you should remember and be sad.
• For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
• I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you’d say, “Where? What?” and turn away.
• She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.
•  Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.

Rossetti is featured as a character in Nerdy Chick Amy Carol Reeve’s historical fiction thriller Ripper.