Explore "Later Life: a Double Sonnet of Sonnets" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Shame is a shadow cast by sin: yet shame / Itself may be a glory and a grace, / Refashioning the sin-disfashioned face; / A nobler bruit than hollow-sounded fame, / A new-lit lustre on a tarnished name, / One virtue pent within an evil place, / Strength for the fight, and swiftness for the race, / A stinging salve, a life-requickening flame. / A salve so searching we may scarcely live, / A flame so fierce it seems that we must die, / An actual cautery thrust into the heart: / Nevertheless, men die not of such smart; / And shame gives back what nothing else can give, / Man to himself, -- then sets him up on high.