XLII
XLII
Original Text
George Henry Boker, Sonnets: A Sequence on Profane Love, ed. Edward Sculley Bradley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929). http://www.sonnets.org/profane-1.htm
1If she should give me all I ask of her,
2The virgin treasures of her modest love;
3If lip to lip in eager frenzy clove,
4And limb with limb should palpitate and stir
5In that wild struggle whose delights confer
6A rapture which the jealous gods above
7Envy and long for as they coldly move
8Through votive fumes of spice and burning myrrh;
9Yea, were her beauty thus securely mine,
10Forever waiting at my beck and call,
11I lord and master of her all in all;
12Yet at that weakness I would fret and pine
13Which makes exhausted nature trip and fall
14Just at the point where it becomes divine.
Publication Start Year
1929
RPO poem Editors
Data entry: Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2012
Rhyme