Arthur Stringer imagines a person walking through a house that stands for an entire life. The speaker quietly shuts a door on a haunted room where he has lived with Sorrow, swearing never to return. Yet as he moves on through other rooms—some ghostly, some glad, all shaped by time—he crosses into a sunlit room expecting something new. Instead, he recognizes it as the same Chamber of Pain he believed he had left behind.
It captures the sinking realization that certain kinds of pain cannot be permanently locked away. No matter how deliberately someone closes a door or moves forward, sorrow can reappear in an unfamiliar place. The mood is quiet and eerie, built from the house imagery and the sudden coldness the speaker feels when hope turns to recognition.