Poem by James Russell Lowell

* * *

  The soul would fain its loving kindness tell,
  But custom hangs like lead upon the tongue;
  The heart is brimful, hollow crowds among,
  When it finds one whose life and thought are well;
  Up to the eyes its gushing love doth swell,
  The angel cometh and the waters move,
  Yet it is fearful still to say "I love,"
  And words come grating as a jangled bell.
  O might we only speak but what we feel,
  Might the tongue pay but what the heart doth owe,
  Not Heaven's great thunder, when, deep peal on peal,
  It shakes the earth, could rouse our spirits so,
  Or to the soul such majesty reveal,
  As two short words half-spoken faint and low!

1. Fancies about a Rosebud, Pressed in an Old Copy of Spenser
2. Fourth of July Ode
3. My Friend, Adown Life's Valley, Hand in Hand
4. Verse Cannot Say How Beautiful Thou Art
5. Much I Had Mused of Love, and in My Soul

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