The House of Life: 73. The Choice – By Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die


Outstretch’d in the sun’s warmth upon the shore,


Thou say’st: “Man’s measur’d path is all gone o’er:



Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,


Man clomb until he touch’d the truth; and I,


Even I, am he whom it was destin’d for.”


How should this be? Art thou then so much more


Than they who sow’d, that thou shouldst reap thereby?



Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash’d mound


Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;


Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown’d.


Miles and miles distant though the last line be,


And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—


Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.