SOURCE: Cervo, Nathan A. “‘Dower in Love's High Retinue’: The Transforming Power of Anima in D. G. Rossetti's ‘A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument’.” English Language Notes 30, no. 3 (March 1993): 59-62.

In the following essay, Cervo considers the function of “The House of Life”'s introductory sonnet.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals The soul,—its converse to what Power 'tis due:— Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. 

One way of looking at the sestet of the Introductory Sonnet to “The House of Life” is to view the three options proffered the reader as being ineluctably disjunctive: 1) a sort of Existential nobility of character avant la lettre; 2) a Neoplatonic conatus toward the ideal of Christian charity, as already set forth...