The Burning-Glass

Burning-glass: large convex lens that can concentrate the sun's rays onto a small area, heating up the area and thus resulting in the ignition of the exposed surface (dictionary.com)

     In the poem The Burning Glass fire is also used as passion, but in a bit of a different way.  The image here is of a woman's spirit being the ray of light that beams through a burning-glass to ignite a fire in a man.  The man who is being ignited is the speaker.  The fire of the woman's spirit "falls like dew" (line 1) and creates a passion in him.  He comes to the realization in the second stanza that if he moves farther toward the woman on the other side of the burning-glass that his passion along with the fire will die out.  He says,"I must endure the torturing ray, and with all beauty, all desire" (lines 7-8).  His passion lies in the fact that he is in the direct light of her beauty.  To move out from under the light of the burning-glass would be to remove all chance of being set on fire, and to move from the light of her beauty would be to snuff out his passion.  But in the third stanza of the poem, the speaker comes to a new realization: there is a burning-glass between him and his love.  If he doesn't make a move, his passion will continue to burn, but he will also never be with her.  He realizes that somehow he must find a way around the burning-glass in order to be with the woman he loves.  This man in love cannot stand to just get burnt; he must find the source of the light in order to be happy.  The man wants to spend his days with the real thing instead of just burning under the ray of her beauty.