The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe: To --
To --
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]
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?***
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! _52.
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, _103.
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. _15NOTE:
_15 form Boscombe manuscript; for editions 1824, 1839.
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