Let's just be friends, shall we?
In this sparkling poem, the speaker briskly rebuffs a would-be lover, suggesting that they can still be friends even if she doesn't love him. It's a topic we're still pondering today
Christina Rossetti, ‘No, thank you, John’
I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?
You know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?
I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform that task.
I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That I don't give you what I have not got:
Use your common sense.
Let bygones be bygones:
Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
Than answer "Yes" to you.
Let's mar our pleasant days no more,
Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at to-day, forget the days before:
I'll wink at your untruth.
Let us strike hands as hearty friends;
No more, no less: and friendship's good:
Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,
And points not understood
In open treaty. Rise above
Quibbles and shuffling off and on:
Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—
No, thank you, John.
What we love about this poem…
Rossetti writes so conversationally that we can almost hear John’s side of the dialogue. That’s hard to do in a poem, but she’s such a master of the deceptively simple, pared-down style that she makes it look easy.
And the confident tone and no-nonsense attitude of the speaker as she smartly rejects John gives the poem a distinctly modern feel. She immediately punctures his lovelorn wistfulness, but she isn’t merciless: she sends him on his way with a hearty handshake and a ‘treaty’ of friendship.
We also love how funny this poem is! It’s a treat and a surprise coming from a poet often seen as strict, solemn, and severe.
About the author
Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was a major nineteenth-century poet and member of an extraordinarily talented family that also included her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a leading poet and painter of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Christina did not associate herself with that group, although critics have often done so. She was profoundly religious and much of her writing expresses her devout Christianity.
Dante Gabriel captured the essence of his sister’s poetry when he called it ‘artless art.’ Her work is characterized by ‘a perfection of diction, tone, and form under the guise of utter simplicity’ (Poetry Foundation).
You can read our earlier Christina Rossetti newsletter here.
Rossetti was an astute observer not just of people but of nature, in its tiny details; something that American poets Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop would later develop in their own poetry.
To read alongside...
Past newsletters have also featured love poems with surprising twists. See the two we link to below:
On Summer Afternoons
Jessie Redmon Fauset, ‘La Vie c’est la Vie’
On summer afternoons I sit
Quiescent by you in the park...
A grotesque and decadent love poem
Countee Cullen, 'The Wise'
DEAD men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go...
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