As By Fire Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As By Fire

Rating: 2.9


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.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Shaun Cronick 08 May 2020

This great poem is totally ruined by the uploaders spacing out of it. A thought- provoking one too.

2 0 Reply
* Sunprincess * 24 April 2016

.....a thoughtfully penned spiritual poem ★

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Johnstown Center / Rock County / Wisconsin
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