She rose, one morn, and swore to free her soul,
Let pent-up love in softening currents flow
Till something human, ay, and heavenly, too,
Were nurtured by the wish from which it sprang.
“She could not work now for herself alone;
For she had learn’d that all life’s purposes
Are held like lenses that a soul may use
To gather in heaven’s light and flash it round
Upon its world illumin’d; or, not so,—
If turn’d on self,—to but inflame and dim