Classic Poem

O that I was all soul, that I might prove
For you as fit a love
As you for angel's, for I vow
None but pure spirits ere are fit for you.

You're all ethereal—there's in you no dross,
Nor any part that's gross;
Your coarsest part is like the curious lawn,
With cords for vestal relics drawn.

Your finer part, part of the purest fire
That ere Heaven did inspire;
Makes every thought that is refined by it,
A quintessence of goodness and of wit.

Thus hath your rapture reach'd to that degree
In love's highest philosophy,
That you can figure to yourself a fire
Void of all heat, a love without desire.

Nor in divinity do you do less,—
You teach and you profess
That souls may have a plenitude of joy
And in seraphic thoughts their powers employ.

But I must needs confess I do not find
The motions of my grosser mind
So purified as yet, but at the best
My body claims some interest.

I hold a perfect joy makes all our parts
As joyful as our hearts;
My senses tell me if you please not them
My love is but a dotage or a dream.

Here shall we then agree? your plea defend,—
But will not my sense end;
I fain would tune my fancy to your key
But cannot reach to such an abstract way.
There rests but this that while we sojourn here
Our bodies may draw near;
And when our joys they can no more extend,
Our souls begin where they did end.