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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  615. To ——

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792–1822

615. To ——

ONE word is too often profaned 
  For me to profane it; 
One feeling too falsely disdain’d 
  For thee to disdain it; 
One hope is too like despair         5
  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  10
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  15
  From the sphere of our sorrow?