On our side of the pond, Rossetti's name is less familiar, and he is known chiefly for his visual art, not his poetry. Even housebound, "his life fast flickering to extinction" (in his brother William's words), the leader of the Pre-Raphaelites roused himself to paint, make sketches of his father, finish a ballad (in which a hard-hearted Dutchman loses a smoking contest with the devil and is carried off to hell), and regale his friend's sister with tales from the Arabian Nights. Many of the individual sonnets in The House of Life had been written much earlier, but a handful-including the collection's introductory sonnet -were composed in Rossetti's last years. Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,- Like multiform circumfluence manifold Of night's flood-tide,-like terrors that agree Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,- Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath, Our hearts discern wild images of Death, Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.