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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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