Never seek to tell thy love
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Never seek to tell thy love is a poem by William Blake.
- Never seek to tell thy love,
- Love that never told can be;
- For the gentle wind does move
- Silently, invisibly
- I told my love, I told my love,
- I told her all my heart;
- Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
- Ah! she doth depart.
- Soon as she was gone from me,
- A traveller came by,
- Silently, invisibly;
- He took her with a sigh.
| Never seek to tell thy love | |
| Written by: | William Blake |
| Published: | 1863 |
| Language: | English |
This was first published in 1863 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his edition of Blake's poems, which formed the second volume of Alexander Gilchrist's posthumous Life of William Blake. It was edited from a notebook in Rossetti's possession, now known as the Rossetti MS., containing a great number of sketches, draft poems, polemical prose, and miscellaneous writings, which Blake kept by him for many years.
As the only textual authority for many of these poems is a foul draft, some of them are partly editorial reconstructions. Thus in the notebook the first stanza of "Never seek to tell thy love" has been marked for deletion, and "seek" has been altered to "pain," while the final quatrain of "I heard an Angel singing" is an editorial arrangement first made by Swinburne.
