I HOLD that we are wrong to seek To put in words our deepest thought; The purer things by Nature taught Are turned to coarser when we speak. The flower whose perfume charms the sense Grows hard and common to the touch, And love that's wordy overmuch Is marred by its experience; For love, like sympathy, hath bands More strong in silence than in speech, And hearts speak loudest, each to each, Through meeting lips and clasp of hands. Nor could I hope for fitting word To form in speech the thoughts that start; The inner core of every heart Hath yearnings that are never heard. They are too subtile, and transcend The power of words to speak them right; We therefore shut them out of sight, To burn in silence to the end. Yet even as the Magi held Their sun as sacred, so I hold My love is holy, sacred-souled, And pure as sacred fire of eld. Nor dare I stain with word or pen This inner purer love to thee Whose higher nature raiseth me Beyond the common line of men. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COME HOME by WILLIAM HERVEY ALLEN JR. PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 38. AL-KABIR by EDWIN ARNOLD EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 34. TRUE LOVE KNOWS BUT ONE by PHILIP AYRES |