Our Lady of the Passion, stabbed with swords,
I cannot, in such beggared life, afford.
To draw my uses to where  with need,
With the new order, As it was, indeed.
This apple of life, and cut it through the pip -
Had left a longer weight upon my lips.
To prove a vain intention? Would I show?
Not over joyous, truly, women know.
Myself even. All analysis comes late.
A dauntless Muse who eyes a dreadful Fate.
A moment? Angry, that I could not bear,
Was flooded with a passion unaware.
The magic circle with the mutual touch,
After possession, yet bequeathed as much.
Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play,
Deliver us from evil, let us pray.
For God alone sits far enough above.
Became aware and unafraid of love.
Whom love had unmade from a common man.
Content, henceforth, to do the thing I can:
He taught me all the ignorance of men,
As dice I; the game of beauty, sure win;
To close I could not hear the angel’s lift,
He too received his sacramental gift.
In the smooth fair mystery of perpetual life,
I could never be happy as your wife.
And kissing full sense into empty words,
Too pretty, to dispute, and too absurd.
And we, who do not speak too loud, within,
Of disputable virtue (say not sin).
And shook with silent clangor brain and hear,
Of waters, that cry out for joy and fear.
Of losing for your sake so poor a prize,
That but too see him is the first surprise.
That murmur of the outer Infinite,
Of that poor bubbly nature -til she went.
Like a white soul tossed out to eternity.
To starve into blind ferocity.
Contriving such a miserable smile,
To make a natural emphasis worthwhile.
The Name down on us from the thunder shelf,
With flame, that it should eat and end itself.
And letting drop the white wax as they went,
She said her name quite simply, as if, it meant.
Crossing herself whenever a sudden flame,
And note the secret of Di Vinci’s drains.
But kept the mystic level of all forms,
And witness; she who did this thing, is born.
Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls,
And none was left to love in all the world.
Sustained, yet low, without a rise or fall,
A quiet life, which was not a life at all.
By Mother Nature more than others use,
The knaves who win so, and the fools who lose.
And both in earnest. Men and women make,
A fool will pass for such through one mistake.
To prove their soundness of humility,
Because she liked instructed piety.
And bury her in silence! Ring no bells!
And never, never have forgotten themselves.
And not speak, after the great news I heard,
Leap forward, taking part against her word.
Whatever I last read or heard or dreamed,
Those eyes, to-day - how overlarge they seemed.
With the left or right hand - in the alien sun,
Thread back the passages of delirium,
Next moment - and I’ve had a plague of seven,
Until it seemed no more than holy heaven.
From God’s celestial crystal’s, all things, blurred.
Find grace enough for pity and gentle word.
But sets hearts beating pure as well as fast,
Like some tormented scorpion. Then, at last.
It stands alone my knowledge, draws me up,
With heart to strike a radiant color up.
Or grow a new familiar with the sun,
And whiter than her moral, - you, for one.
Toward which, new hearts in individual growth,
Inexorably pushed between us both.
From the empyreal, to assure their souls,
For thee, -And I, for thee! This poet knows.
Of any day or night, the moon and sun,
Since ever to be seen by only one -
It is not gathered as a grain of sand,
As almost you could touch them with a hand.
Because we are of one flesh after all,
While standing humbly squeezed against the wall.
From alien lips which had no kiss for mine,
But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine.

~Yvonne Renee Moore

Mixed Lines from the Poem
by Elisabeth Barrett Browning’s
       “Aurora Leigh”