The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/To ——. 'One word is too often profaned'

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

TO ———

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]

IOne 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 5For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another.

III can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not 10The 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?