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LET ME BELIEVE
Let me believe you, love, or let me die!
If on your faith I may not rest secure,—
Beyond all chance of peradventure sure,—
Trusting your half-avowals sweet and shy,
As trusts the lark the pallid, dawn-lit sky,—
Then would I rather in some grave obscure
Repose forlorn, than, living on, endure
A question each dear transport to belie!
It is a pain to thirst and do without,
A pain to suffer what we deem unjust,
To win a joy—and lay it in the dust;
But there's a fiercer pain,—the pain of doubt:
From other griefs Death sets the spirit free;
Doubt steals the light from immortality!
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