Poems of Passion — 48 - As by fire

What do the dead care, for the tender token-- The love, the praise, the floral offerings?

But palpitating, living hearts are broken For want of just these things.

AS BY FIRE.

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning For spiritual perfection here below, This vigorous frame, with healthful fervor burning, Seems my determined foe, So actively it makes a stern resistance, So cruelly sometimes it wages war Against a wholly spiritual existence Which I am striving for.

It interrupts my soul's intense devotions;

Some hope it strangles, of divinest birth, With a swift rush of violent emotions Which link me to the earth.

It is as if two mortal foes contended Within my bosom in a deadly strife, One for the loftier aims for souls intended, One for the earthly life.

And yet I know this very war within me, Which brings out all my will-power and control, This very conflict at the last shall win me The loved and longed-for goal.

The very fire which seems sometimes so cruel Is the white light that shows me my own strength.

A furnace, fed by the divinest fuel, It may become at length.

Ah!

when in the immortal ranks enlisted, I sometimes wonder if we shall not find That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted, Our places are assigned.