My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, In grievous passions my woes still bemoaning; My eyes with tears against the fire striving, Whose scorching gleed my heart to cinders turneth, But with these drops the flame again reviving, Still more and more it to my torment turneth. With Sisyphus thus do I roll the stone, And turn the wheel with damned Ixion. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SEPARATION by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON HER EYES TWIN POOLS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON GUNS AS KEYS: AND THE GREAT GATE SWINGS by AMY LOWELL SURFACES AND MASKS; 4 by CLARENCE MAJOR BLACK EAGLE RETURNS TO ST. JOE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS DOMESDAY BOOK: DR. TRACE TO THE CORONER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS NICHARCHUS UPON PHIDON HIS DOCTOR by EZRA POUND MODERN PARAPHRASE OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET 29 by GEORGE SANTAYANA |