To What Shall I Compare You

To what shall I compare you, my sweet love?

How, having known you, can I face the crowd?

You take my heart out with a velvet glove

And then establish it inside a cloud.

Your precious beauty and your tender heart,

The incandescent passion of your spirit -

However many miles we be apart,

You bring me to adore and to revere it.

Your elegance of motion and of dress,

Your gentle smile and your infectious laughter,

Your fierce resolve and will that seeks no less

Than knowing and attaining Hereafter -

The eyes that, like volcanic crater lakes,

Reflect the sky toward which you are so close -

That for the truth's and for the beauty's sakes

Dissolve the elements that from the earth arose -

Your playful, delicate and resurrecting mind

That weaves the pain and knowledge into sweetness -

The thoughts and feelings that are intertwined

And from their synthesis creates completeness -

Your intuition, powerful and true,

And genius producing divine splendor -

Not only do I say that I love you,

But to what made you, darling, I surrender -

However I compare you, my delight,

You're always something more and something greater,

And like a mountain climber in the night

I cannot see and fall into your crater.