Explore "Dead before Death" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sonnet.
Ah! changed and cold, how changed and very cold! / With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes: / Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise; / _This_ was the promise of the days of old! / Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould, / Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies: / We hoped for better things as years would rise, / But it is over as a tale once told. / All fallen the blossom that no fruitage bore, / All lost the present and the future time, / All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before: / So lost till death shut-to the opened door, / So lost from chime to everlasting chime, / So cold and lost forever evermore.