TAKE every joy my nature holds,
Take every bliss my heart enfolds;
Come, capture every one,
While youth and beauty run,
Locked in each other’s lithesome arms—
Like flowers entwined.
Cast from thy mind
Those fearful, hindering alarms.
Take, to the last deep drop,
Nor think when you would stop,
My strength’s rich wine.
Love made divine
The rapturous blood of me for you.
Red, full and bright,
Like Vallambrosa’s vineyard dew
On autumn’s night.
My mind explore, its treasures take,
So long as joy is there
To find, and leave it bare
Of every thought that might awake
New transports in your soul—
Then break the empty bowl,
So no one else may use
The vessel, should one choose.
My body clean and sweet enjoy,
’Twas made to serve your least delight,
And when at last our passions cloy,
In one fierce moment, rise and smite
With withering scorn,
And leave it shorn
Of all its energy and force.
Then, blasted, reel it down death’s course.
My soul? Nay, that, my love, you cannot hurt,
For it is thee. Look, and it will assert
Your image like a faithful stream,
Reflecting every feature of your form,
Showing the slightest, quickest gleam
From eyes which make it pass from cold to warm.
It is, O love, your heart, your pulse, your breath,
And only in your loss can it know death!
Here I surrender all my mind,
My heart, my body, all you find
In thought, in blood, in flesh, to serve thee well
In giving heaven—then, thou, consign to hell
Whate’er is left of me.
E’en then my joy shall be—
That it was wrecked by thee.