As By Fire.

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning          For spiritual perfection here below,              This vigorous frame, with healthful fervor burning,          Seems my determined foe,              So actively it makes a stern resistance,          So cruelly sometimes it wages war              Against a wholly spiritual existence          Which 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          Which 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,          One 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          The 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,          It 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,          Our places are assigned.