Christina Rossetti: Poems Lesson Plan

What might 'the road' symbolize?

The conversation about the road, journey, and inn works on multiple levels. One could chose to see it as literal, but it also works as a metaphor for any kind of journey, be it physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. On its grandest scale, it works as a metaphor for the journey of life, which must end in death, and the resulting afterlife that Rossetti believed in. In this reading, life is compared to a long, up-hill journey with a long road obscured by its winding nature. It also indicates by virtue of it being a road that it has been travelled before - it is a prescribed way. This could indicate not just a life journey, but a life...