I am a beast until I love as God doth love.
15.
Ah, say not, 'tis but perfect self I want
But if it were, that self is fit to live
Whose perfectness is still itself to scant,
Which never longs to have, but still to give.
A self I must have, or not be at all:
Love, give me a self self-giving--or let me fall
To endless darkness back, and free me from life's thrall.
16.
"Back," said I! Whither back? How to the dark?
>From no dark came I, but the depths of light;
>From the sun-heart I came, of love a spark:
What should I do but love with all my might?
To die of love severe and pure and stark,
Were scarcely loss; to lord a loveless height--
That were a living death, damnation's positive night.
17.
But love is life. To die of love is then
The only pass to higher life than this.
All love is death to loving, living men;
All deaths are leaps across clefts to the abyss.
Our life is the broken current, Lord, of thine,
Flashing from morn to morn with conscious shine--
Then first by willing death self-made, then life divine.
18.
I love you, my sweet children, who are gone
Into another mansion; but I know
I love you not as I shall love you yet.
I love you, sweet dead children; there are none
In the land to which ye vanished to go,
Whose hearts more truly on your hearts are set--
Yet should I die of grief to love you only so.
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