Twice or thrice had I loved thee,

Before I knew thy face or name;

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,

Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;

Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.

But since my soul, whose child love is,

Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

More subtle than the parent is Love must not be,

but take a body too;

And therefore what thou wert, and who,

I bid love ask, and now

That it assume thy body I allow,

And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.