| |
| LIVE in these conquering leaves: live all the same; | |
| And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame; | |
| Live here, great heart; and love, and die, and kill: | |
| And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still. | |
| Let this immortal life where’er it comes | 5 |
| Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms. | |
| Let mystic deaths wait on’t; and wise souls be | |
| The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee. | |
| O sweet incendiary! show here thy art | |
| Upon this carcase of a hard cold heart; | 10 |
| Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play | |
| Among the leaves of thy large books of day, | |
| Combin’d against this breast at once break in, | |
| And take away from me myself and sin; | |
| This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be | 15 |
| And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me. | |
| O thou undaunted daughter of desires! | |
| By all thy dower of lights and fires; | |
| By all the eagle in thee, all the dove; | |
| By all thy lives and deaths of love; | 20 |
| By thy large draughts of intellectual day, | |
| And by thy thirsts of love more large than they; | |
| By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire, | |
| By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire; | |
| By the full kingdom of that final kiss | 25 |
| That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His; | |
| By all the Heav’n thou hast in Him | |
| (Fair sister of the seraphim!); | |
| By all of Him we have in thee; | |
| Leave nothing of myself in me. | 30 |
| Let me so read thy life, that I | |
| Unto all life of mine may die! | |
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