“Winter: My Secret” Introduction

• "Winter: My Secret" is Christina Rossetti's strange, teasing, playful tale of the power of mystery. The poem's speaker tantalizes her listener with the idea that she's got a big secret, one she'll never tell. The more she insists that she wants her privacy, the more fascinated her listener gets. This, the poem hints, is precisely what the speaker is hoping for. Rossetti first published this poem in her important 1862 collection Goblin Market and Other Poems.

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“Winter: My Secret” Summary

• Me, give away my secret? Oh, no, I won't. Maybe someday I'll tell; who can say? But not today. It's freezing cold and snowing outside, and you're too nosy—darn you! You want to know my secret? Well, good for you. But it's my secret, and I won't tell it.

  Or maybe I don't have a secret. What if I didn't have one at all? What if I were just playing? Today's such a chilly day; it makes you want a shawl, a veil, a cloak, and all kinds of other warm clothes to wrap yourself in. I can't open my door to everyone who happens to knock and let the cold winds through my front door—winds that will leap around me, knock into me, stun me, biting through all my layers. I wear a mask to stay warm—for who's silly enough to uncover his nose in weather cold as Russia's, to be nipped by all the icy winds? You say you wouldn't nip at me? Well, thanks for saying so, and I believe you, but I'm not going to find out.

  Spring's a more open, comfortable time. But I don't trust dusty March, or April with its brief, rainbowy sunshowers—or even May, when the flowers might all die in a moment if a sudden frost happened to come at night.

  Maybe on some lazy summer day, when the sleepy birds fall quiet and an abundance of fruit ripens and overripens; on a day when it's neither too sunny nor too cloudy, and the wind isn't either too still or too gusty; perhaps on a day like that, I might tell you my secret—or you might guess it.

“Winter: My Secret” Themes

• 

  Secrecy and Power

  The speaker of this poem has a secret, and she knows how to use it. On a long cold winter day, she finds both pleasure and clout in teasing a friend who's desperate to know what her secret might be (or if indeed she has a secret "after all"). A secret, this poem suggests, can give its keeper power; ironically enough, refusing to share a secret and insisting on one's privacy might be an excellent way of capturing and holding attention.

  This poem's speaker dances her secret around in front of her listener's eyes like a cat toy. Every time they beg her to tell them what the big secret is, she whisks it away, insisting that "my secret's mine, and I won't tell." When that trick starts to wear off, the speaker changes tack, saying, "suppose there is no secret after all"—until her listener is hooked again. The speaker even suggests that she might play this game for months and months. It's winter now, she notes; maybe by summer she'll be willing to tell all—that is, if "there's not too much sun nor too much cloud," if the weather is just right.

  The speaker's prolonged toying with her listener suggests that she's discovered that nothing makes a person so fascinating as a secret they won't reveal. All across the poem, her apparent desire for privacy comes across more as an ironic bid for attention. Secrets have power, the poem suggests—but only so long as they remain secret.

  The speaker's images of secrecy as layers of clothing might also hint that the speaker's desire for her listener's attention has a flirtatious edge. Revealing her secret, the clothing symbolism suggests, would be like undressing. Perhaps she and the listener both feel the power and the charm of that possibility!

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Winter: My Secret”

• Lines 1-6

  I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
  Perhaps some day, who knows?
  But not today; it froze, and blows, and snows,
  And you're too curious: fie!
  You want to hear it? well:
  Only, my secret's mine, and I won’t tell.

  As "Winter: My Secret" begins, readers may feel as if they've interrupted a conversation. The poem's speaker is right in the middle of responding to her friend, who seems to have just asked her a question: "I tell my secret?" the speaker incredulously repeats. She most certainly will not, she goes on: "No indeed, not I." This will be a poem about the pleasure and power of secret-keeping.

  This dramatic monologue (a poem spoken in the voice of a particular character, like a speech in a play) begins on a blustery, chilly winter day; the speaker and her friend don't seem to have much to do but sit inside and tease each other. The speaker, at least, seems to be enjoying herself. Right from the start, her voice sounds frisky, mischievous, even a little flirtatious. When she reprimands her friend with the words "You're too curious: fie!" it's clear she's not really upset. Her mock-solemn use of "fie" (an old-fashioned cry of disapproval even for a Victorian like Christina Rossetti) shows that she's teasing—and her colloquial, familiar tone suggests her inquisitive listener is a friend. The words "You want to hear it? well," for instance, could be paraphrased "You want to hear it? That's nice for you." This secret-keeping is clearly a game.

  The poem's tricksy rhymes and rhythms make the speaker's playfulness all the clearer. There's nothing so orderly as a rhyme scheme or meter here:

  • While, for the most part, the poem is written in iambs (metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "indeed"), it doesn't settle into any regular pattern. The lines change length willy-nilly, ranging from pentameter (lines with five strong beats, as in "But not | today; | it froze, | and blows, | and snows") to dimeter (lines with just two beats, as in "Or you | may guess").
  • The rhyme is similarly playful: the poem uses plenty of end rhyme, but never falls into a predictable scheme.
  • And the speaker relishes internal rhymes (like "it froze, and blows, and snows"), clusters of sound that make her voice feel almost silly, as if she were a little kid chanting nonsense words.

  All of these choices make the poem sound as playfully evasive as the speaker herself. She won't be cornered into telling her secret; the poem won't be bound to a regular meter or rhyme scheme. The sounds and the speaker alike dodge and weave.

• Lines 7-9

  Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
  Suppose there is no secret after all,
  But only just my fun.

  

  

• Lines 10-17

  To-day's a nipping day, a biting day;
  In which one wants a shawl,
  A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
  I cannot ope to every one who taps,
  And let the draughts come whistling through my hall;
  Come bounding and surrounding me,
  Come buffeting, astounding me,
  Nipping and clipping through my wraps and all.

  

  

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• Lines 18-22

  I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
  His nose to Russian snows
  To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
  You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
  Believe, but leave that truth untested still.

  

  

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• Lines 23-27

  Spring's an expansive time: yet I don’t trust
  March with its peck of dust,
  Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
  Nor even May, whose flowers
  One frost may wither through the sunless hours.

  

  

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• Lines 28-34

  Perhaps some languid summer day,
  When drowsy birds sing less and less,
  And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
  If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
  And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
  Perhaps my secret I may say,
  Or you may guess.

  

  

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“Winter: My Secret” Symbols

• 

  Winter and Cold

  Wintery, nipping cold becomes a symbol of invasion, intrusion, and excessive curiosity. The poem's speaker sees her secrecy as a "mask," a "veil," a "shawl"—that is, layers and layers of protection between her and the icy winter world that wants to "nip[]" and "peck" at her. By presenting the world's curiosity as cold winds, the speaker suggests that to reveal her secret might mean she'd freeze—that there's something uncomfortable and perhaps even dangerous about exposing herself to prying outsiders.

  • See where this symbol appears in the poem.
• 

  Clothing

  The speaker's imagined winter clothes symbolize her secrecy. Readers who have heard people say they're keeping something "under wraps" will be familiar with this symbolism: it's pretty common to present secrecy as protective layers of clothing. For a Victorian lady (as the "shawl," "veil," and "cloak" named here suggest the speaker is), these layers would also mean decency. By suggesting she's got something hidden beneath her clothing, the speaker implies that it's only proper that she not reveal what must be a juicy secret indeed.

  This clothing symbolism also gives the poem a flirtatious note. After all, in this framework, to reveal the secret would be to get undressed!

  • See where this symbol appears in the poem.

“Winter: My Secret” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Repetition

  Repetitions help to conjure up the speaker's evasive voice.

  The first stanza, for instance, ends where it began: the speaker starts by incredulously exclaiming "I tell my secret?" and ends by firmly declaring, "my secret's mine, and I won't tell." That roundabout refusal sets up a pattern for the whole poem: the speaker will keep on playing with her listener this way, reminding them that she has a secret and refusing to admit it, over and over.

  There's a similar effect at the beginning of the next stanza, in lines 7-8:

  Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
  Suppose there is no secret after all,

  The echo there hints that the speaker is enjoying her listener's attention, and she's trying her best to keep it fixed on herself. Having just refused to reveal her secret, she opens up a new corridor for exploration—the idea that she might just be a big liar—and then, gathering steam (perhaps as she observes that her listener's curiosity is piqued), repeats herself.

  Some of her reasons for all this teasing might appear in a moment of polysyndeton in line 6:

  Only, my secret's mine, and I won’t tell.

  This is a tautology (a statement that restates itself, something obviously true). But it's also a really important feeling for the speaker. Her secret is her precious private possession—and it brings her power. Perhaps her delight in the idea that the secret is hers suggests that she doesn't feel she owns much else in the world; this secret is her one treasure.

  Elsewhere, repetitions give the speaker's voice an impish, fanciful edge. Take the anaphora in these lines, for instance:

  And let the draughts come whistling through my hall;
  Come bounding and surrounding me,
  Come buffeting, astounding me,

  These bouncy repetitions suggest a speaker carried away by her own playfulness as she imagines something that isn't currently happening. Picturing cold winds frisking around her like badly trained dogs, she uses fittingly frisky rhythms.

  In the poem's closing stanza, the speaker slows down a little. Here, repetitions suggest she's savoring her listener's torment, drawing their suspense out to painful lengths. "Perhaps" in the summer she might decide to reveal her secret, she says in line 28—but only "perhaps," she reiterates in line 33. Her anaphora suggests she relishes her secrecy so much she might play it out indefinitely. So does another moment of anaphora: her resolve to reveal her secret only if there's neither "too much sun nor too much cloud"—only if the light is just right.

  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Irony

  

  
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• Personification

  

  

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• Rhetorical Question

  

  

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"Winter: My Secret" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Fie
• Well
• Nipping
• Ope
• Taps
• Draughts
• Bounding
• Buffeting
• Astounding
• Clipping
• Believe, but leave that truth untested still
• Expansive
• Peck
• The sunless hours
• Languid
• Drowsy

• A cry of disapproval.

  • See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Winter: My Secret”

• Form

  "Winter: My Secret" uses a flexible, experimental shape of Rossetti's own design. Rather than sticking to any particular stanza form or meter, this poem stretches and changes to suit the speaker's voice: its 34 lines are broken into four irregular stanzas, ranging from five to sixteen lines long.

  For the most part, the playful speaker talks in short, coy stanzas, as if speaking through lips pursed in a private little smile. The one time she bursts out in a longer speech, it's not any more revealing than the short ones: rather, it's a tirade against people who (like cold winds) would try to pick at her through her layered veils of secrecy.

  The poem's unpredictable form makes this dramatic monologue (a poem spoken in the voice of a particular character, like a speech from a play) sound natural and impromptu, as if capturing a real person's moods. Like the speaker, the poem nimbly evades its listener; its form dodges and weaves and refuses to be pinned down.

• Meter

  This poem's shifty, flexible meter helps to make the speaker's voice sound artful and slippery.

  While the poem is mostly iambic—that is, written in iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "perhaps"—it's far from consistent. What's more, lines change length without warning, zigzagging like a fox escaping a hound. Listen, for example, to the rhythms in lines 7-9:

  Or, af- | ter all, | perhaps | there's none:
  Suppose | there is | no se- | cret af- | ter all,
  But on- | ly just | my fun.

  As the speaker veers into the new suggestion that they might not even have a secret, their rhythms hop and skip. Line 7 is in iambic tetrameter (four iambs in a row), line 8 in iambic pentameter (five iambs), and line 9 is in iambic trimeter (three iambs). This meter won't be cornered or marshalled any more than the speaker will.

• Rhyme Scheme

  "Winter: My Secret" uses plenty of rhyme, but nothing so orderly as a rhyme scheme. Rather than falling into a neat pattern, the poem's rhymes lurch and swerve all over the place—an effect that suits the speaker's evasive, mischievous voice.

  In the long second stanza, for instance, the rhymes run like this:

  ABACBDDBEEBFFFGG

  This whirling, dizzying pattern mirrors the action of this long stanza. As the speaker dances around, evading the icy winds of curiosity, the rhymes swirl like snowflakes in her wake.

  The speaker also delights in internal rhyme—for instance, in line 3, where she remarks that today, "it froze, and blows, and snows," or in line 15, where she pictures chilly draughts "bounding and surrounding" her. These rhymes make the lines bounce like puppies, keeping the speaker's tone playful—and preventing her well-guarded secret from seeming too solemn.

“Winter: My Secret” Speaker

• The poem's speaker is a coy, mysterious, perhaps flirtatious woman. (Though the poem never says outright that she's a woman, her layers of clothing—"a shawl, / A veil, a cloak, and other wraps"—suggest she's a Victorian lady like Rossetti.) She's got a secret, she says—and though she insists she wants the person she's talking to to shush and stop pestering her about what the secret is, she clearly enjoys their attention. For most of the poem, she tantalizes her listener with the idea that maybe, someday, down the line in summer, she might finally confess—you know, if the weather is just right.

  The speaker's tantalizing evasions suggest that she's discovered a delicious power in mystery and secrecy—perhaps a power she can't enjoy any other way. And by symbolically presenting her secrecy as layers of clothing, she makes her coyness feel flirtatious: to reveal her secret, in this symbolic framework, would be to get undressed!

“Winter: My Secret” Setting

• "Winter: My Secret" is set, unsurprisingly enough, in winter. It's a cold and blustery day outside, and the poem's speaker (and their listener) are huddled indoors. These conditions give the poem a cooped-up, cabin-feverish mood: the speaker and her listener seem to have nothing to do but sit by the fire and tease each other. The speaker claims she has a secret; the listener pesters her about what that secret might be. The chilly weather outside becomes, for the speaker, a symbol of that pestering. She wants to be wrapped up warm in metaphorical mufflers and veils and cloaks of secrecy; her listener's curiosity is a chilly wind trying to pierce through all those layers.

  The cold weather also suggests a general mood: winter, the speaker implies, is a natural time of concealment and secrecy, and she's only matching her behavior to the weather. Perhaps when the weather is more "expansive," in spring or summer, it'll feel like the right time for her to open up, too—or perhaps not!

Literary and Historical Context of “Winter: My Secret”

• Literary Context

  Victorian poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was born in England to a large and talented family and grew up surrounded by art. (Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also a well-known poet and painter.) Rossetti began her poetic career young; her first poems appeared in literary journals when she was only a teenager. "Winter: My Secret" comes from the mature collection that made her name: Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862). (Its original title was just plain "My Secret"; the "Winter" got added in a later edition, to cap a series of other seasonal poems.)

  That collection (and especially its title poem, which started a Victorian vogue for sinister fairy tales) was hailed right away as something wild and new. As one contemporary critic said:

  To read these poems after the laboured and skilful, but not original, verse which has been issued of late, is like passing from a picture gallery with its well-feigned semblance of nature, to the real nature out-of-doors which greets us with the waving grass and the pleasant shock of the breeze.

  Rossetti was influenced by Elizabeth Barrett Browning—another popular woman poet with strong ties to Italy—and some of her contemporaries saw her as the elder poet's natural successor. As this poem's shape suggests, Rossetti was also deeply influenced by an earlier Victorian great: Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Rossetti here borrows the stanza form Tennyson used to write his famous elegy In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850).

  She was also connected to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the artistic school of which her brother Dante Gabriel was a founding member. Her father's work as a scholar of Italian literature meant she was exposed at an early age to the great Italian poets Dante and Petrarch, whose influence may be seen in her fondness for the Italian sonnet form.

  Rossetti's reputation as a brilliant lyrical poet has never tarnished, and she's still much studied today. Her poetry has been a major influence on writers from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

  Historical Context

  Christina Rossetti lived in a world marked both by revolutionary change and reactionary conservatism. The Victorians were innovators and empire-builders, and England reshaped itself considerably under the reign of Victoria, its first truly powerful queen since Elizabeth I. A primarily rural population began to move into the cities as factory work outpaced farm work. Writers from Dickens to Hardy worried about the human effects of rapid change and rapacious commerce.

  Perhaps in response to this speedy reconfiguration of the world, Victorian social culture became deeply conservative. Women were expected to adhere to a strict code of sexual morals: a woman must be chaste, pliant, and submissive, and any deviation could mean social exile. But within this repressive landscape, women writers began to flourish, asserting the complexity and meaning of their own lives. Rossetti's work was part of a tide of bold and moving poetry and fiction by Victorian women; Charlotte and Emily Brontë, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are only a few of the writers whose work achieved contemporary recognition against the odds.

More “Winter: My Secret” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Rossetti's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

  • Portraits of Rossetti — See paintings and photos of Rossetti (some of them portraits by her artist brother) via London's National Portrait Gallery.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.

  • Rossetti at the Victorian Web — Visit the Victorian Web to find a treasure trove of Rossetti resources.

  • Rossetti's Reception — Learn about how Rossetti was received in her time in this appreciation, written not long after her death.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Christina Rossetti

  • A Birthday

  • An Apple Gathering

  • At Home

  • Babylon the Great

  • Cousin Kate

  • Echo

  • From the Antique

  • Good Friday

  • In an Artist's Studio

  • In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857 (Indian Mutiny)

  • Maude Clare

  • No, Thank You, John

  • Piteous my rhyme is

  • Remember

  • Shut Out

  • Sister Maude

  • Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde

  • Some ladies dress in muslin full and white

  • Song (When I am dead, my dearest)

  • Twice

  • Up-Hill