There is a love so perfect it requires No touch of clinging lips or clasping hands. It blossoms not from passion, so demands No fleshly contact. Chaste this flame which fires The soul to high endeavor. It inspires No fevered longings. Of its fragile strands Man weaves himself a heaven. It withstands Adversity, for this white love aspires. But it is delicate as that faint bloom On purple fruits or on a night moth's wings; And frail as frostwork so it shares the doom Of all life's exquisitely lovely things. It can survive the tomb, such love as this, But it will vanish at a single kiss. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT by ANNE BRADSTREET VOLUNTARIES by RALPH WALDO EMERSON THE EXEQUY [ON HIS WIFE] by HENRY KING (1592-1669) CHANT OF DEPARTURE; A MISSIONARY'S PRAYER by ALFRED BARRETT POLYHYMNIA: DEDICATION TO THE COUNTESS OF LINDSEY by WILLIAM BASSE ILLUSIONS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |