ME since your fair ambition bows Feodary to those gracious brows, Is nothing mine will not confess Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? Though use to the white yoke inures, Half-petulant is Your loving rebel for somewhat his, Not yours, my love, not yours! Behold my skies, which make with me One passionate tranquillity! Wrap thyself in them as a robe, She shares them not; their azures probe, No countering wings thy flight endures. Nay, they do stole Me like an aura of her soul. I yield them, love, for yours! But mine these hills and fields, which put Not on the sanctity of her foot. Far off, my dear, far off the sweet Grave @3pianissimo@1 of your feet! My earth, perchance, your sway abjures? -- Your absence broods O'er all, a subtler presence. Woods, Fields, hills, all yours, all yours! Nay then, I said, I have my thought, Which never woman's reaching raught; Being strong beyond a woman's might, And high beyond a woman's height, Shaped to my shape in all contours. -- I looked, and knew No thought but you were garden to. All yours, my love, all yours! Meseemeth still, I have my life; All-clement Her its resolute strife Evades; contained, relinquishing Her mitigating eyes; a thing Which the whole girth of God secures. Ah, fool! pause! pause! I had no life, until it was All yours, my love, all yours! Yet, stern possession! I have my death, Sole yielding up of my sole breath, Which all within myself I die, All in myself must cry the cry Which the deaf body's wall immures. -- Thought fashioneth My death without her. -- Ah, even death All yours, my love, all yours! Death, then, be hers. I have my heaven, For which no arm of hers has striven; Which solitary I must choose, And solitary win or lose. -- Ah, but not heaven my own endures! I must perforce Taste you, my stream, in God your source, -- So steep my heaven in yours! At last I said -- I have my God, Who doth desire me, though a clod, And from His liberal Heaven shall He Bar in mine arms His privacy. Himself for mine Himself assures. -- None shall deny God to be mine, but He and I All yours, my love, all yours! I have no fear at all lest I Without her draw felicity. God for His Heaven will not forego Her whom I found such heaven below, And she will train Him to her lures. Naught, lady, I love In you but more is loved above; What made me, makes Him, yours. 'I, thy sought own, am I forgot?' Ha, thou? -- thou liest, I seek thee not. Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, What have I taught thee but her name? Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, I give her thee; Page her triumphal name! -- Lady, Take her, the thrall is yours. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JOAN OF ARC IN RHEIMS by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS IN HOSPITAL: 4. BEFORE by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY INSPIRATION by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1822-1882) THE DAY IS DONE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW A CHARACTER by ALFRED TENNYSON |