1.
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 _5
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
2.
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?
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TO —.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
There is a Boscombe manuscript.]
1.
When passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep! _5
2.
It were enough to feel, to see,
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest—and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been, _10
3.
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love. _15
NOTE: _15 form Boscombe manuscript; for editions 1824, 1839.
***