Chapter XVII

With all my heart and brain, my feeling and my seeing,
And with the flaming torch of all my being
That reaches toward your goodness and your love,
Forever unassuaged,
I love and bring you thanks and endless praise
For having come in all simplicity
Along devoted ways,
To take, with gracious hands, my destiny.

And since you leaned above,
I know--oh what a love!
Candid and clear as is the dew
Fallen upon my tranquil soul from you.

I am yours as by their nerves of flame
Fire and fuel merge;.
All my flesh and all my soul
Strive to you with undesisting urge;
Nor do I cease from long remembering
The fervency and beauty of our years,
Till suddenly I feel my eyes are filled
Deliciously, with unoblivious tears.

I come to you happy and resolved
With proud desire to be unto your soul
He who shall be the surest of its joys.
Tenderness folds us in an aureole;
Echoes, within me, at your call assemble;
The hour is holy and with rapture fraught,
And just to touch your brow my fingers tremble,
As though they brushed the pinions of your thought.