while thinking about poetry...

(...before the pyjamas go on) I just remembered this poem by P.B. Shelley. I found it first inside A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge (beautiful story, not very nice last name). The last four lines are my favourite. Haunting. At the moment it feels like the words are fluttering inside my throat. They are whispery. And wistful.

♥

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?

~ P.B. Shelley

(Picture from: here.)