In applying such a test to the writings of Rossetti, it is necessary to distinguish between what may be roughly termed the “personal” and the “impersonal” poems. In the one class, supremely exemplified by the “House of Life” sonnets, but including also “Dante at Verona,” “The Stream’s Secret,” “The Portrait,” and many of the shorter lyrics, the personal note of love or grief, of memory or hope, is wholly dominant; the poet’s soul is absorbed with its individual being, and sees in all the life around him the illustration and interpretation of his own. In the other class, in the great romantic ballads, in “Rose Mary” and “The Blessed Damozel,” in “The White Ship” and “The King’s Tragedy,” in “The Bride’s Prelude” and “Sister Helen,” the imagination takes a higher and a larger range; the one soul interprets others, waiting not to be interpreted. The art becomes impersonal in this sense only—that the thought of self is merged in the full and immense life of humanity, laying hold of the universal consciousness through its own initiative experience; the heart beats with the world’s heart, shares its eternal struggles, contributes to its eternal growth; and the spirit knows itself one fragment of an infinite whole. In such a sphere the art remains the more vitally personal, in that the poet brings the mysteries of existence, the abiding problems and realities of the conscious world, to the touchstone, as it were, of his own spirit, and submits himself thereby to the more crucial test,—of how he can interpret humanity to man, and make more clear the knowledge, more possible the realization, of his highest ideals.