Nature
Wild Heart: VI. The Dark Fire
From Poems New and Old (1920)
Love me not less
Yet ease me of this fever,
That in my wondering heart
Burns, sinks, burns again ever.
Is it your love
In me so fiercely burning,
Or my love leaping to you
Then requickened returning?
Come not to me,
Bring not your body nearer,
Though you overleapt the miles
I could not behold you clearer.
I could not clasp you
Than in my thought more surely;
Breast to breast, heart to heart
Might cling no more securely.
I do not know you,
Seeing you, more than unseeing.
What you are that you are
Here in my spiritual being.
Leave me you cannot,
Nor can I remove me
From the sevenfold dark fire
You have lit here since you love me.
Yet love unsure
No wilder could be burning.
Come, go, come, go,
There's neither leaving nor returning.
Love me, love me more.
O, not my heart shall quaver
If the dark fire more deep
Sinks and is sevenfold sevenfold graver.
Cite this poem
MLA
Freeman, John. “Wild Heart: VI. The Dark Fire.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/freeman/42/.
Chicago
Freeman, John. “Wild Heart: VI. The Dark Fire.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/freeman/42/.
Read this poem with the Codex →