my scarlet ladybird

“Come back, my scarlet ladybird,
Back from far away;
I weary of my dolly wife,
My wife that cannot play.

She’s such a senseless wooden thing
She stares the livelong day;
Her wig of gold is stiff and cold
And cannot change to grey.”

Christina Rossetti, from I caught a little ladybird. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

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