The Green Pajamas

Song For Christina / A Nightmare

This is for you Christina
Out in your world of blue
You didn't want me to sing it
I can't help what I do
I can't help what I do...

**I have a friend in ghostland,
Early found, ah me how early lost! 
Blood-red seaweed drips along that coastland
By the strong sea wrenched and tost.

If I wake he hunts me like a nightmare:
I feel my hair stand up, my body creep:
Without light I see a blasting sight there,
See a secret I must keep.**

This is for you Christina
Now that you're no longer blue
You didn't want me to sing it
I can't help what I do
I can't help what I do...

_______________________
by Jeff Kelly
(c) 1993 St. Brigid Publishing
**A Nightmare** fragment by Christina Rossetti

Dedicated to Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
and inspired by her poem entitled, "Song"

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain.
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget. 

Song (1862)