Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The House of Life. Sonnet 68. A Dark Day

The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
Sowed hunger once,--the night at length when thou,
O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

1. The House of Life. Sonnet 40. Severed Selves
2. The House of Life. Sonnet 33. Venus Victrix
3. The House of Life. Sonnet 90. «Retro Me, Sathana!»
4. The House of Life. Sonnet 35. The Lamp's Shrine
5. The House of Life. Sonnet 89. The Trees of the Garden

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