Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828–82

From “The House of Life: a Sonnet-Sequence.” VII. Inclusiveness

RossetDG

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

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?

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.