Keeping a Heart

If one should give me a heart to keep, 
With love for the golden key,
The giver might live at ease or sleep;
It should ne’er know pain, be weary, or weep, 
The heart watched over by me.

I would keep that heart as a temple fair,
No heathen should look therein;
Its chaste marmoreal beauty rare
I only should know, and to enter there 
I must hold myself from sin.

I would keep that heart as a casket hid 
Where precious jewels are ranged,
A memory each; as you raise the lid,
You think you love again as you did 
Of old, and nothing seems changed.

How I should tremble day after day, 
As I touched with the golden key, 
Lest aught in the heart were changed, or say 
That another had stolen one thought away 
And it did not open to me.

But ah, I should know that heart so well, 
As a heart so loving and true, 
As a heart that I held with a golden spell, 
That so long as I changed not I could foretell 
That heart would be changeless too.

I would keep that heart as the thought of heaven, 
To dwell in a life apart,
My good should be done, my gift be given,
In hope of the recompense there; yea, even
My life should be led in that heart.

And so on the eve of some blissful day, 
From within we should close the door 
On glimmering splendours of love, and stay 
In that heart shut up from the world away,
Never to open it more.