In an article on Christina Rossetti, Fred Sanders concludes:
There are lots of reasons to read Christina Rossetti, but here’s one of them: She knew how to read Homer. She brought to the Iliad everything she had and everything she was –her broad education, her Victorian womanhood, her vast potentials and her searing limitations. But above all, she brought to the reading of Homer her deep faith in Christ. She did not cheaply deploy the Jesus trump card, but she certainly knew where her help came from and when the true Golden Age was:
Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength
Most weak, and life most burdensome,
I lift mine eyes up to the hills
From whence my help shall come:Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart
To the Archangelic trumpet-burst,
When all deep secrets shall be shown,
And many last be first.