Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

To ——: ‘One word is too often profaned’

ONE word is too often profaned

For me to profane it;

One feeling too falsely disdained

For thee to disdain it;

One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother;

And pity from thee more dear

Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love:

But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above,

And the Heavens reject not:

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow?

(1821.)