Explore "Later Life: a Double Sonnet of Sonnets" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When we consider what this life we lead / Is not, and is; how full of toil and pain, / How blank of rest and of substantial gain, / Beset by hunger earth can never feed, / And propping half our hearts upon a reed; / We cease to mourn lost treasures mourned in vain, / Lost treasures we are fain and yet not fain / To fetch back for a solace of our need. / For who that feel this burden and this strain, / This wide vacuity of hope and heart, / Would bring their cherished well-beloved again: / To bleed with them and wince beneath the smart, / To have with stinted bliss such lavish bane, / To hold in lieu of all so poor a part?