But she must have the form first- Rossetti's heady, breathless form, this "paratactic piling up of noun on noun" which hastens the reader, along with Laura, towards the succulent temptations offered by the goblins is best illustrated in the goblins" descriptions of their tempting fruits:.
Apples and quinces .
Lemons and oranges,.
Plump unpecked cherries,.
Melons and raspberries,.
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,.
Swart-headed mulberries,.
Wild free-born cranberries,.
Crab-apples, dewberries,.
Pine-apples, blackberries,.
Apricots, strawberries.
The poetic form of Goblin Market is irrevocably bound up with the content, suggesting that Rossetti, "like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, defies her heritage of metrical correctness and womanly propriety and, instead, suggestively connects the goblins" hobbling, laughing energy with the missed steps of metre". (Leighton, 12) This metrical indulgence, gives Goblin Market a sensual art for art's sake, which is usually reserved for male poets, making this offering to the public by a poetess incompatible with Victorian notions of female poetic beauty.
Even more shocking to the Victorian notions of the female poetic sphere than Rossetti's shunning of "metrical correctness and womanly propriety" is the subject matter addressed throughout her irregular meter. She creates a fairy-tale atmosphere, suggested by the inclusion of the goblin men and the adolescent independence of Laura and Lizzie who reside in this dream-like world, would suggest that this is a children's poem. The ballad form that the poem takes on also backs up this supposition. To label Goblin Market as a children's poem opens the door for Rossetti to explore "themes of the evil of self-indulgence, the fraudulence of sensuous beauty and the supreme duty of renunciation [which] become all the more sinister when disguised as whimsical child's play", without blatantly acknowledging to herself or to her readers that this is what she is doing.
