AS BY FIRE.

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning For spiritual perfection here below, This vigorous frame with healthful fervor burning, 3Seems my determined foe.

So actively it makes a stern resistance, So cruelly sometimes it wages war Against a wholly spiritual existence 3Which 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 3Which 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, 3One 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 3The 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 3It 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, 3Our places are assigned.