O May I Join the Choir Invisible! and Other Favorite Poems

O May I Join the Choir Invisible! and Other Favorite Poems

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge mens minds To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing a beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, failed and agonized With widening retrospect that bred despair. Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor, anxious penitence is quick dissolved; p. 3Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, Die in the large and charitable air; And all our rarer, better, truer self, That sobbed religiously in yearning song, That watched to ease the burden of the world, Laboriously tracing what must be, And what may yet be bettersaw rather A worthier image for the sanctuary And shaped it forth before the multitude, Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mixed with love That better self shall live till human Time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 20742
Author: Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Release Date: Mar 4, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Browning, Robert, 1812-1889, Eliot, George, 1819-1880, Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822