O sweet incendiary! shew here thy art,
Upon this carcasse of a hard, cold, hart,
Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy larg Books of day,
Combin’d against this BREST at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin,
This gratious Robbery shall thy bounty be;
And my best fortunes such fair spoiles of me.
O thou undanted daughter of desires!
By all thy dowr of LIGHTS & FIRES;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy larg draughts of intellectuall day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill’d Bowles of feirce desire
By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdome of that finall kisse
That seiz’d thy parting Soul, and seal’d thee his;
By all the heav’ns thou hast in him
(Fair sister of the SERAPHIM!)
By all of HIM we have in THEE;
Leave nothing of my SELF in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may dy.
Richard Crashaw, 1612-1649 – “The Flaming Heart. Upon the Book and
Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa” from Metaphysical Poetry
Tim Miller 
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