Explore "The Offering" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What will you give me for this heart of mine, / No heart of gold -- and yet my dearest treasure? / It has its graces -- it can ache and pine, / And beat true time to your sweet voice's measure; / It bears your name, it lives but for your pleasure: / What will you give me for this heart I bring, / That holds my life, my joy, my everything?
How can I ask a price, when all my prayer / Is that, without return, you will but take it -- / Feed it with hope, or starve it to despair, / Keep it to play with, mock it, crush it, break it, / And, if your will lies there, at last forsake it? / Its epitaph shall voice its deathless pride: / "She held me in her hands until I died. "