| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| From “The House of Life: a Sonnet-Sequence.” VII. Inclusiveness |
| | | Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82) |
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| THE CHANGING guests, each in a different mood, | |
| Sit at the roadside table, and arise: | |
| And every life among them in like wise | |
| Is a soul’s board set daily with new food. | |
| What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood | 5 |
| How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?— | |
| Or thought, as his own mother kiss’d his eyes, | |
| Of what her kiss was when his father woo’d? | |
| May not this ancient room thou sitt’st in dwell | |
| In separate living souls for joy or pain? | 10 |
| Nay, all its corners may be painted plain | |
| Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well; | |
| And may be stamp’d, a memory all in vain, | |
| Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell. | |
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