The professor and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

I, in my chill and celibate content,
Have little claim to murmur: but I pine
To feel a warm hand tremble into mine,
And loving lips above my forehead bent;
And yet my dreams are charged with high intent
To do, to be, to suffer; to refine
My troubled thought, till these thin strains combine
With larger themes, in airy concord blent.

Ah, but I miss the human utterance,
That yearning, as the magnet for the pole,
Still wavers, till the secret current set
Towards its true home: in indolent regret
I linger: could I break the sickly trance!
And in one fierce surrender, find my soul!