Give All to Love

Use Tab to move through poem lines. Press Enter or Space to select a line. Hold Shift while selecting a second line to create a shared range.

1. Give all to love;
2. Obey thy heart;
3. Friends, kindred, days,
4. Estate, good-fame,
5. Plans, credit, and the Muse,—
6. Nothing refuse.
7.  
8. 'Tis a brave master;
9. Let it have scope:
10. Follow it utterly,
11. Hope beyond hope:
12. High and more high
13. It dives into noon,
14. With wing unspent,
15. Untold intent;
16. But it is a god,
17. Knows its own path;
18. And the outlets of the sky.
19.  
20. It was not for the mean;
21. It requireth courage stout,
22. Souls above doubt,
23. Valor unbending;
24. Such 'twill reward,—
25. They shall return
26. More than they were,
27. And ever ascending.
28.  
29. Leave all for love;
30. Yet, hear me, yet,
31. One word more thy heart behoved,
32. One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
33. Keep thee to-day,
34. To-morrow, forever,
35. Free as an Arab
36. Of thy beloved.
37.  
38. Cling with life to the maid;
39. But when the surprise,
40. First vague shadow of surmise
41. Flits across her bosom young
42. Of a joy apart from thee,
43. Free be she, fancy-free;
44. Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
45. Nor the palest rose she flung
46. From her summer diadem.
47.  
48. Though thou loved her as thyself,
49. As a self of purer clay,
50. Though her parting dims the day,
51. Stealing grace from all alive;
52. Heartily know,
53. When half-gods go,
54. The gods arrive.