To ----

by 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?

***

In one of the boxes of books that I sorted through a while back, there was one called "Poems that Live Forever", that I had brought downstairs. I guess at some point in the time since then, I read through it and had some pages bookmarked. (I don't dogear book books.) One of those pages had this poem by Shelley on it. Hovering in the back of my mind, twitching to be posted, but no way to do so, I shall simply say that it does well encapsulate my thoughts on the word that shall not be spoken.