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I. I LOVE my lover; on the heights above me | |
| He mocks my poor attainment with a frown. | |
| I, looking up as he is looking down, | |
| By his displeasure guess he still doth love me; | |
| For his ambitious love would ever prove me | 5 |
| More excellent than I as yet am shown, | |
| So, straining for some good ungrasped, unknown, | |
| I vainly would become his image of me. | |
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| And, reaching through the dreadful gulfs that sever | |
| Our souls, I strive with darkness nights and days, | 10 |
| Till my perfected work towards him I raise, | |
| Who laughs thereat, and scorns me more than ever, | |
| Yet his upbraiding is beyond all praise. | |
| This lover that I love I call: Endeavour. | |
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II. I have another lover loving me, | 15 |
| Himself beloved of all men, fair and true. | |
| He would not have me change although I grew | |
| Perfect as Light, because more tenderly | |
| He loves myself than loves what I might be. | |
| Low at my feet he sings the winter through, | 20 |
| And, never won, I love to hear him woo. | |
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| For in my heaven both sun and moon is he, | |
| To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile, | |
| His voice like April airs that in our isle | |
| Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went. | 25 |
| His words are all caresses, and his smile | |
| The relic of some Eden ravishment; | |
| And he that loves me so I call: Content. | |
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