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.