The Flaming Heart
Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa
by Richard Crashaw (1612 or 1613-1649)

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,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled 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 sealed thee His,
By all the Heavens thou hast in him,
(Fair sister of the seraphim!)
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leave nothing of my self in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die!

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