:“Easily the best” of the three, according to Baum ( 174 ), the sonnet imagines life under the sign of what WMR called “physical enjoyment” ( 233 ). That choice of phrase is significant for it signals WMR's move to avoid the pejorative overtones of a term like “hedonism”. In this reading WMR shows his awareness of DGR's wholly positive representation of this sonnet's constellation of ideas.

The theme of death in , elsewhere treated in a highly positive fashion through its association with certain spiritual ideas (see and ), is here given an unusual affirmation in a very different lexicon. The final three lines here are crucial (the 1870 version is much to be preferred to the 1881): the sonnet measures a death-in-life existence against a rich mortality in a manner that parallels DGR's much-loved .

DGR revised the text considerably as it passed through the 1869-1870 proofs before its publication in the 1870 . Further revisions were made when it was republished in 1881, and one change was made (in line 5) between the first and second editions of the 1870 volume. WMR and DGR in particular discussed in an exchange of letters the text of line 11, which underwent various alterations (see the letters of the brothers to each other of August and September 1869 and WMR, , 218 ).

As in the case of and a number of other of his poems, DGR was concerned that readers might think he was plagiarizing in this sonnet. Here the correspondence is with Browning rather than Tennyson: “There is a very vexatious point connected with this sonnet which was one reason for my thinking of omitting the three. The idea—‘They die not, never having lived’, is identical with one at the close of Browning's [line 230]. I know that I had never read that poem, and that on first reading it this annoying fact struck me at once, but then this is not known to the world. The point is just what is wanted and not possible to alter.” DGR then adds that a similar circumstance applies to both and (see DGR's letter of 26 August 1869, Fredeman, , 69. 139 ).

: By running the octave and the sestet together DGR seems to have wanted to construct a formal equivalent for the theme of spiritual anxiety that governs the sonnet.

Like the other sonnets in group, this one reflects DGR's early preoccuption with ideas associated with Pre-Raphaelite programs. Here religious and biblical sources provide a point of view that can look critically at some of the more common “progressive” ideas of the Victorian period.

One manuscript of the sonnet in the Troxell Collection, Princeton University, is quite early, as the handwriting shows. It probably dates back to the late 1840s. Printer's copy for the Penkill Proofs was made from this manuscript.

The text in the Penkill Proofs undergoes only two minor revisions before it is printed in the 1870 volume, and it remains stable after that. The early manuscript of the sonnet, however, has several substantial variations.

The image at lines 6-9 focuses one of DGR's favorite Pre-Raphaelite constellations (i.e., angelic presences).

is probably the most biblical of the three. The language throughout recalls various texts from both the Old and the New Testament.

: This sonnet's critique of what WMR named “the theory of self-development” calls attention to the way DGR involves each of the three sonnets with the others. This sonnet takes up a key ideological locus of Victorian secular culture. Its limitations are partly defined in the sonnet itself, but partly in relation to the ideological positions defined in the other two sonnets.

DGR's habit of torquing his language for unexpected associations opens this sonnet to a self-reflexive reading. The key terms are “measured” (line 3) and “line” (line 12). To the degree that we permit the literary overtones of these words to surface, to that extent the sonnet becomes a comment on the writer's life, and perforce on the writing of itself. Indeed, this old sonnet and its companions (written in the late 1840s, but here recovered for a further range of meaning in 1869-1870) becomes a performative instance of the semantic argument.

The text in the Penkill Proofs undergoes only three minor revisions before it is printed in the 1870 volume, and it remains stable after that.