Friday poetry blogging

I have rarely (if ever) participated in Friday poetry blogging, because I'm usually overwhelmed by the choices. How can I pick one poem? How can I answer when someone asks me what my favorite novel is? These questions undo me. But I've been dipping into other people's Friday poetry blogs and enjoying all that I've been reading there. So here goes.

This is Sonnet XXV from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House of Life series (1870).

WINGED HOURS.

Each hour until we meet is as a bird
That wings from far his gradual way along
The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong,
Through our contending kisses oft unheard.

What of that hour at last, when for her sake
No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?