| |
| I HAVE won free of your body at last; | |
| The fire and ice of it | |
| Can neither burn nor freeze me fast. | |
| |
| I look upon you now no whit | |
| Afraid, for I do not desire: | 5 |
| And yet, what is the benefit? | |
| |
| I still must worship; something higher | |
| Impels me youward constantly. | |
| Yet I am fagot for a fire | |
| |
| The heat of which is of such degree | 10 |
| That I shrivel painlessly therein; | |
| And I am flower for a sea | |
| |
| So cold all things that find it win | |
| To death without the slightest change. | |
| Although I have torn the cabals of sin, | 15 |
| |
| I drift beyond the senses’ range | |
| In spiritual perfectness | |
| To lands remote, grotesquely strange, | |
| |
| That thrill my passions now no less | |
| Than even your beauty thrilled before. | 20 |
| But this, this joy, is fathomless; | |
| |
| More certain, steadfast, deeper, more | |
| Inexorable, and it demands | |
| The core of what we thought the core! | |
| |
| You cannot touch it with your hands, | 25 |
| You cannot see it with your eyes: | |
| Only your soul that understands | |
| May teach you its divinities! | |
| |
