During the Sundays of Advent this year, the Emerging Scholars Network will be posting works by Christina Rossetti. As a thoughtful poet who engaged deeply with faith, Rossetti wrote a number of poems about the church calendar. In the Advent poems we share here, she engages with the traditional idea of Advent as both remembering Christ’s first coming and waiting for His second. Her imagery is rich and thoughtful, and we hope this poetry helps you to reflect on what it means to wait for Christ. For material from our archives on Advent click here. To God be the glory! – Hannah 

Advent
by Christina Rossetti

“Come,” Thou dost say to Angels,
To blessed Spirits, “Come”;
“Come,” to the Lambs of Thine Own flock,
Thy little Ones, “Come home.”

“Come,” from the many-mansioned house
The gracious word is sent,
“Come,” from the ivory palaces
Unto the Penitent.

O Lord, restore us deaf and blind,
Unclose our lips tho’ dumb;
Then say to us, “I come with speed,”
And we will answer, “Come.”

Source: Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems, ed. R. W. Crump (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 731.

Image credit: Christ the Good Shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=51106 [retrieved November 24, 2015]. Original source: Wikimedia Commons.