Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, KEEPING A HEART; TO M-- D--, by ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

KEEPING A HEART; TO M-- D--, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If one should give me a heart to keep
Last Line: Never to open it more.
Alternate Author Name(s): O'shaughnessy, Arthur W. E.
Subject(s): Hearts; Love


IF one should give me a heart to keep,
With love for the golden key,
The giver might live at ease or sleep;
It should ne'er know pain, be weary, or weep,
The heart watched over by me.

I would keep that heart as a temple fair,
No heathen should look therein;
Its chaste marmoreal beauty rare
I only should know, and to enter there
I must hold myself from sin.

I would keep that heart as a casket hid
Where precious jewels are ranged,
A memory each; as you raise the lid,
You think you love again as you did
Of old, and nothing seems changed.

How I should tremble day after day,
As I touched with the golden key,
Lest aught in the heart were changed, or say
That another had stolen one thought away
And it did not open to me.

But ah, I should know that heart so well,
As a heart so loving and true,
As a heart that I held with a golden spell,
That so long as I changed not I could foretell
That heart would be changeless too.

I would keep that heart as the thought of heaven,
To dwell in a life apart,
My good should be done, my gift be given,
In hope of the recompense there; yea, even
My life should be led in that heart.

And so on the eve of some blissful day,
From within we should close the door
On glimmering splendours of love, and stay
In that heart shut up from the world away,
Never to open it more.





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