Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The House of Life. Sonnet 92. The Sun's Shame - 1

Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
From life; and mocking pulses that remain
When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
And longed-for woman longing all in vain
For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:
Beholding these things, I behold no less
The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
The shame that loads the intolerable day.