To A Pious Coquette Poem by Bernard Brown

Go, take your cold heart with you. Go!
And fool with ours no more:
For some will feel and love and fall,
And grieve from the heart's core. Oh, give me those whose blood is warm,
Sweat-soaked with sin and tears:
'Tis finer far to suffer so
Than live complacent years. As Christ in anguish on the Cross
Was cleansed from human pain,
So we who find Him first in Hell
Are raised to Heaven again. Go, take your icy purity;
God give us life's hot coals:
And, in the fire, refine like gold
Our hearts and minds and souls.