Time flies - A Reading Diary

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Imagem daqui

March, 4.

My first vivid experience of death (if so I may term it) occurred in early childhood in the grounds of a cottage.

This little cottage was my familiar haunt: its grounds were my inexhautible delight. They then seemed to my spacious, though now I know them to have been narrow and commonplace.

So, in these grounds, perhaps in the orchard, I lighted upon a dead mouse. The dead mouse moved my sympathy: I took him up, buried him comfortably in a mossy bed and bore the spot in mind.

It may have been a day or two afterwards that I returned, removed the moss coverlet and looked... a black insect emerged. I fled in horror, and for long years insuing I never mentioned this ghastly adventure to anyone.

Now looking back at the incident I see that neither impulse was unreasonable, although the sympathy and the horror were alike childish.

Only now contemplating death from a wider and wiser view-point, I would fain reverse the order of those feelings: dwelling less and less on the mere physical disgust, while more and more on the rest and safety; on the perfect peace of death, please God.

Time Flies - A Reading Diary

Christina G. Rossetti

London

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

1897