Poetry Friday - Not so heavy

Here is another of Christina Rossetti, from her book of "religious poems" called Verses.

A heavy heart, if ever heart was heavy,

I offer Thee this heavy heart of me.

Are such as this the hearts Thou art fain to levy

To do and dare for Thee, to bleed for Thee?

Ah, blessed heaviness, if such they be!

Time was I bloomed with blossom and stoof leafy

How long before the fruit, if fruit there be:

Lord, if by bearing fruit my heart grows heavy,

Leafless and bloomless yet accept of me

The stripped fruit-bearing heart I offer Thee.

Lifted to Thee my heart weighs not so heavy,

It leaps and lightens lifted up to Thee;

It sings, it hopes to sing amid the bevy

Of thousand thousand choirs that sang, and see

Thy face, me loving, for Thou lovest me.

-Christina Rossetti