One Word Is Too Often Profaned

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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
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?

Next 10 Poems

• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ozymandias
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Prometheus Unbound: Act I ( Excerpt )
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Queen Mab: Part Vi ( Excerpts )
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Remorse
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Rosalind And Helen: A Modern Eclogue
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Song
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Song Of Proserpine
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Stanzas Written In Dejection Near Naples
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : The Cloud

Previous 10 Poems

• Percy Bysshe Shelley : One Sung Of Thee Who Left The Tale Untold
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : On Death
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : On A Dead Violet
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Ode To The West Wind
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Night
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Mutability
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Music, When Soft Voices Die
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Mont Blanc: Lines Written In The Vale Of Chamouni
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Mont Blanc
• Percy Bysshe Shelley : Love's Philosophy