The Project Gutenberg eBook, O May I Join the Choir Invisible!, by George
Eliot

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Title: O May I Join the Choir Invisible!
and Other Favorite Poems

Author: George Eliot

Release Date: March 4, 2007 [eBook #20742]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!***

Transcribed from the 1884 D. Lothrop and Company edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org

{Book cover: cover.jpg}

O MAY I JOIN
THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!

BY
GEORGE ELIOT

AND OTHER FAVORITE POEMS

_ILLUSTRATED_

BOSTON
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

Copyright by
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
1884

{"May I reach that purest Heaven!": p0.jpg}

O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor, anxious penitence is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air;
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better--saw rather
A worthier image for the sanctuary
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love--
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.

This is life to come,
Which mart