Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/145

Rh The power completely to detach the soul From her companion through this life, the flesh; So that in blessed privacy of peace, Communing with high angels, she can hold, Serenely rapt, her solitary course. Ye know, O saints of heaven, what I have borne Of discipline and scourge ; the twisted lash Of knotted rope that striped my shrinking limbs ; Vigils and fasts protracted, till my flesh Wasted and crumbled from mine aching bones, And the last skin, one woof of pain and sores, Thereto like yellow parchment loosely clung ; Exposure to the fever and the frost, When mongst the hollows of the hills I lurked From persecution of misguided folk, Accustoming my spirit to ignore The burden of the cross, while picturing The bliss of disembodied souls, the grace Of holiness, the lives of sainted men, And entertaining all exalted thoughts, That nowise touched the trouble of the hour, Until the grief and pain seemed far less real Than the creations of my brain inspired. The vision, the beatitude, were true : The agony was but an evil dream. I speak not now as one who hath not learned The purport of those lightly-bandied words, Evil and Fate, but rather one who knows