Note 174 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
Mr. Arnold Daly was in the habit of opening the third act of Candida by reading the familiar verses of Shelley to an unnamed love:
“One word is too oft profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disclaimed For thee to disclaim 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?”