Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make, <br />Of all that strong divineness which I know <br />For thine and thee, an image only so <br />Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break. <br />It is that distant years which did not take <br />Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, <br />Have forced my swimming brain to undergo <br />Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake <br />Thy purity of likeness and distort <br />Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: <br />As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, <br />His guardian sea-god to commemorate, <br />Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort <br />And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.<br /><br />Elizabeth Barrett Browning<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/xxxvii/
