Eternal Sunshine Of a Spotless Mind

Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain--do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself--and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Source: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1630.html
background:
------------
The poem is an example of a genre represented in Latin by Ovid's Heroides. These heroic epistles are always addressed by a woman to a man who has abandoned her. The situations require an "heroic" treatment because they involved important personages. The heroes represent what one critic has described as "sorrowing or rebellious love." Peter Abailard (1079-1142), at thirty-eight a famous scholar, became at this time the tutor of Eloisa, the eighteen-year-old niece of Fulbert, the canon of Paris. Their passionate secret love resulted in Eloisa's conceiving, whereupon Abelard removed her to Brittany. After refusing to agree to marriage for a long time because it would ruin Abelard's career in the church, Eloisa finally consented and the couple returned to Paris for a secret wedding. But the uncle's anger revived. Abelard took Eloisa to a convent at Argenteuil where she was professed as a novice. Her uncle then paid ruffians to attack Abelard in his lodgings and castrate him. After his various attempts at monastic life, students again gathered about Abelard and built him the halls and church of the Paraclete, sixty miles from Paris. Further persecution by his enemies or fear of them eventually led him to accept the Abbey of St. Gildeas in Brittany. When Eloisa's nuns were expelled from Argenteuil, he offered them the Paraclete and visited them as a spiritual director, until his visits caused scandal. Eloisa began the correspondence after a letter, addressed to an unfortunate friend, describing his adversities as a means of comforting the friend, fell into her hands.