Dante Gabriel Rossetti's dramatic monologue “A Last Confession” revolves around the key ideas of love betrayed, passion, and guilt.

The speaker is giving his final confession to a priest, for he is dying from wounds received in his defense of Italy from it Austrian overlords. He tells of the young girl he once rescued after she had been abandoned by her parents during a famine. As time passes, the girl grows into a woman, and the speaker's love for her moves from the love of a father or brother to the love of a man for a woman. She returns his love, and for a while, they are happy.

Then something changes. The young woman's heart grows cold toward the speaker, and he does not understand why. He cannot grasp how her love has died, yet her laugh is now filled with scorn, and she claims that she has new thoughts and new devotions. The speaker is hurt; his beloved has betrayed him just like the spies at the village fair have betrayed Italy.

Having been rejected by his beloved, the speaker must cope with his passions. He is confused and upset. He wants to meet her again in hopes of reconciliation but at least to say good-bye. He buys a little knife for her, hoping that it will help to renew the pledge between them but knowing that it might be a parting gift. But when his beloved laughs cruelly in his face, his passion flares. Before he even knows what has happened, she is dead at his feet. He has stabbed her in the heart with the little knife. His passion has overtaken his reason, his senses, and even his love, and he has killed the girl he has so loved.

Now the speaker is consumed by guilt. His beloved, he thinks, is haunting him. He can see her with her wet hair wrapping around her, filled with sand and blood. The knife is in her heart, but he tells the priest that he is watching her draw it out, smiling at him. The speaker is also afraid that God will not forgive him for this deed, and he does not seem sure whether or not he is truly repentant. He is not certain that the priest should even absolve him of his sin even as he lies near death. Perhaps he cannot forgive himself.