Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900/To ——

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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
  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?

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