Image worship
Why mounts my blood to cheek and brow,
Like an ascending flame,
Whene'er from careless lips I hear
The accents of thy name?
Why, when my idle fancy seeks
Some pictured form to trace,
Beneath my pencil still will grow
The features of thy face?
Why comes thy haunting shadow thus
Between the world and me,
To bind my spirit with a charm
That blinds to all but thee?
To bid me watch thine upward course,
Thy path from mine so far;
As earth, 'mid all the hosts of heaven,
Watches the polar star?
Thy cold and polished courtesy,
Each look and tone of thine,
Might well have roused the woman's pride
In duller souls than mine.
They tell me, too, thy heart is light, --
That more than once thou'st loved;
And 'mid all flowers of loveliness
That bee-like thou hast roved.
Why is it, then, while o'er thy heart
There comes no thought of me,
The good, the true, the beautiful,
All speak to me of thee?
Think'st thou 'tis what the world calls love,
Love that return is seeking?
No -- I would scorn a love I sought,
Although my heart were breaking.
It is because within the human heart
There is an altar to an Unknown God,
Who from the gods of this world dwells apart,
And in the Unseen, the Unreal, has his abode.
This disembodied thought the soul pursues,
And seeking in the visible a sign,
She moulds an image, like the apostate Jews,
And sets her idol on the vacant shrine.
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poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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