The House of Life: 73. The Choice, III

By Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828–1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die

Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore,

Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er:

Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,

Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I,

Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for."

How should this be? Art thou then so much more

Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound

Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;

Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.

Miles and miles distant though the last line be,

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—

Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

Biography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born 12 May 1828 in London, the second child and eldest son of Italian expatriates. His father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a Dante scholar, who had been exiled from Naples for writing poetry in support of the Neapolitan Constitution of 1819. Rossetti’s mother had trained as a governess and supervised her children's early education. Few Victorian families were as gifted as the Rossettis: the oldest child, . . .

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