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a mere housewife · #4 (**permalink**) 04-17-2007, 03:28 PM

Davis, a lot of the lines in your poem which was very good to read (had you posted one here before? I haven't been on for some time), reminded me of this poem by Donne which is one of my favorites.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
-John Donne

And just for good measure, another poem my mind often runs over and over by Lewis:

My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run
With longing, are in me
Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one
That drips to find the sea.
I have no care for anything thy love can grant
Except the moment’s vain
And hardly noticed filling of the moment’s want
And to be free from pain.
Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep
Nor slumber, who didst take
All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep
Watch for me till I wake.
If thou think for me what I cannot think, if thou
Desire for me what I
Cannot desire, my soul’s interior Form, though now
Deep-buried, will not die,
-No more than the insensible dropp’d seed which grows
Through winter ripe for birth
Because, while it forgets, the heaven, remembering throws
Sweet influence still on earth,
-Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes
Still turning round the earth.

-from the Pilgrim’s Regress