[In the following excerpt, Norton offers a favorable assessment of "Goblin Market," maintaining that the work is Rossetti's best and that its linking of fantastic imagery to everyday life allows "Goblin Market" to "vie with Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'."]

The "Goblin Market," by Miss Christina Rossetti, is one of the works which are said to "defy criticism." Is it a fable—or a mere fairy story—or an allegory against the pleasures of sinful love—or what is it? Let us not too rigorously inquire, but accept it in all its quaint and pleasant mystery, and quick and musical rhythm—a ballad which children will con with delight, and which riper minds may ponder over, as we do with poems written in a foreign language which we only half understand.

One thing is certain; we ought not to buy fruit from goblin men. We ought not; and we will not. The cost of doing so, is too passionately portrayed in Miss Rossetti's verses to permit us to err in such a sort. The cunning, and selfish overreaching of the goblins is too faithfully rendered in Mr. D. G. Rossetti's picture—"Buy from us with a golden curl"—to allow us to be taken in. Decidedly not all the list of delicious fruits with which the volume opens shall make us waver in our resolution. We agree with Lizzie, the conscientious sister—

'We must not look at goblin men,
 We must not buy their fruits:
 Who knows upon what soil they fed
 Their hungry thirsty roots?'
 'Come buy,' call the goblins
 Hobbling down the glen.
 'Oh,' cried Lizzie, 'Laura, Laura,
 You should not peep at goblin men.'
 Lizzie covered up her eyes,
 Covered close lest they should look;
 Laura reared her glossy head,
 And whispered like the restless brook:
 'Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
 Down the glen tramp little men.
 One hauls a basket,
 One bears a plate,
 One lugs a golden dish
 Of many pounds weight.
 How fair the vine must grow
 Whose grapes are so luscious;
 How warm the wind must blow
 Through those fruit bushes.'
 'No.' said Lizzie: 'No, no, no;
 Their offers should not charm us,
 Their evil gifts would harm us.'

We regret Laura's fall in spite of such sweet warning:—

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
 'Good folk, I have no coin;
 To take were to purloin:
 I have no copper in my purse,
 I have no silver either,
 And all my gold is on the furze
 That shakes in windy weather
 Above the rusty heather.'
 'You have much gold upon your head,'
 They answered all together:
 'Buy from us with a golden curl.'

She clipped a precious golden lock,
 She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
 Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
 Sweeter than honey from the rock;
 Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
 Clearer than water flowed that juice;
 She never tasted such before,
 How should it cloy with length of use?
 She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
 Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
 She sucked until her lips were sore;
 Then flung the emptied rinds away,
 But gathered up one kernel-stone,
 And knew not was it night or day
 As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate
 Full of wise upbraidings:
 'Dear, you should not stay so late,
 Twilight is not good for maidens;
 Should not loiter in the glen
 In the haunts of goblin men.
 Do you not remember Jeanie,
 How she met them in the moonlight,
 Took their gifts both choice and many,
 Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
 Plucked from bowers
 Where summer ripens at all hours?
 But ever in the moonlight
 She pined and pined away;
 Sought them by night and day,
 Found them no more but dwindled and grew grey;
 Then fell with the first snow,
 While to this day no grass will grow
 Where she lies low:
 I planted daisies there a year ago
 That never blow.
 You should not loiter so.'

We tremble as we read the contrast, suddenly resulting, between the two golden-haired sisters:—

Early in the morning
 When the first cock crowed his warning,
 Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
 Laura rose with Lizzie:
 Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
 Aired and set to rights the house,
 Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
 Cakes for dainty months to eat,
 Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
 Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
 Talked as modest maidens should:
 Lizzie with an open heart,
 Laura in an absent dream,
 One content, one sick in part;
 One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
 One longing for the night.

We shudder over the weird change in poor Laura:—

Day after day, night after night,
 Laura kept watch in vain
 In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
 She never caught again the goblin cry:
 'Come buy, come buy;'—
 She never spied the goblin men
 Hawking their fruits along the glen:
 But when the noon waxed bright
 Her hair grew thin and grey;
 She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
 To swift decay and burn
 Her fire away.

She no more swept the house,
 Tended the fowls or cows,
 Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
 Brought water from the brook:
 But sat down listless in the chimney-nook
 And would not eat.

Till at last, as with Effie and Jeanie Deans, the one sister risks all to save the other; and Lizzie, putting a silver penny in her purse, sets out to buy from the goblin-men!—

Laughed every goblin
 When they spied her peeping:
 Came towards her hobbling,
 Flying, running, leaping,
 Puffing and blowing,
 Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
 Clucking and gobbling,
 Mopping and mowing,
 Full of airs and graces,
 Pulling wry faces,
 Demure grimaces,
 Cat-like and rat-like,
 Ratei- and wombat-like,
 Snail-paced in a hurry,
 Parrot-voiced and whistler,
 Heiter skelter, hurry skurry,
 Chattering like magpies,
 Fluttering like pigeous,
 Gliding like fishes,—
 Hugged her and kissed her,
 Squeezed and caressed her:
 Stretched up their dishes,
 Panniers, and plates:
 'Look at our apples
 Russet and dun,
 Bob at our cherries,
 Bite at our peaches,
 Citrons and dates,
 Grapes for the asking,
 Pears red with basking
 Ont in the sun,
 Plums on their twigs;

Pluck them and suck them,
 Pomegranates, figs.'

Here is a picture of the spite which goblin-men show, when you will not eat with them of their strange fruits:—

They trod and hustled her,
 Elbowed and jostled her,
 Clawed with their nails,
 Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
 Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
 Twitched her hair out by the roots,
 Stamped upon her tender feet,
 Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
 Against her mouth to make her eat.

We are relieved to find that Lizzie nevertheless escapes in safety:—

At last the evil people,
 Worn out by her resistance,
 Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit
 Along whichever road they took,
 Not leaving root or stone or shoot;
 Some writhed into the ground,
 Some dived into the brook
 With ring and ripple,
 Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
 Some vanished in the distance.

She cried 'Laura,' up the garden,
 'Did you miss me?
 Come and kiss me.
 Never mind my bruises,
 Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
 Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
 Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
 Eat me, drink me, love me;
 Laura, make much of me:
 For your sake I have braved the glen
 And had to do with goblin merchant men.

Laura's penitence is as mysterious as her sin; but we are beyond measure soothed and comforted when we learn this:—

But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,
 And early reapers plodded to the place
 Of golden sheaves,
 And dew-wet grass
 Bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,
 And new buds with new day
 Opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,
 Laura awoke as from a dream,
 Laughed in the innocent old way,
 Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;
 Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of grey,
 Her breath was sweet as May,
 And light danced in her eyes.

Very beautiful are the simple lines which follow:—

Days, weeks, months, years,
 Afterwards, when both were wives
 With children of their own;
 Their mother-hearts beset with fears,
 Their lives bound up in tender lives;
 Laura would call the little ones
 And tell them of her early prime,
 Those pleasant days long gone
 Of not-returning time:
 Would talk about the haunted glen,
 The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
 Their fruits like honey to the throat
 But poison in the blood.

There are other poems in the volume full of serious power and purpose, and full also of poetry and passion. The sonnet, entitled "Rest," is one of the finest of these; and the brief, but full of meaning, "Up-hill," the gentle page, "Consider the Lilies of the Field," and the less openly intelligible but beautiful "From House to Home," prove the versatility, as well as the originality of genius, which has fallen to the share of this young writer. Many verses of Miss Rossetti, scattered through other works, make many readers familiar with her writings; but incomparably the best of her compositions is the "Goblin Market," which may vie with Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," in its degree, for the vivid and wonderful power by which things unreal and mystic are made to blend and link themselves with the everyday images and events of common life.