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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  339. Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Richard Crashaw. 1613?–1649

339. Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa

O THOU undaunted daughter of desires! 
By all thy dower of lights and fires; 
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove; 
By all thy lives and deaths of love; 
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,         5
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they; 
By all thy brim-fill’d bowls of fierce desire, 
By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire; 
By the full kingdom of that final kiss 
That seized thy parting soul, and seal’d thee His;  10
By all the Heav’n thou hast in Him 
(Fair sister of the seraphim!); 
By all of Him we have in thee; 
Leave nothing of myself in me. 
Let me so read thy life, that I  15
Unto all life of mine may die!