In vain shall lovers' sighs
Plead with cool paper,
Seek in uncertain rhyme
An articulate echo

In vain our mistresses
Use their best art to please,
Elizabethan eyes
Mock them through centuries

The ghost of Helen glides
Safe to unclouded shores
Where no wind blows, but tides
Break like hexameters

Wishes and dreams create
The ageless, immaculate
Girl whose green bones are hid
In book, in pyramid

For dreams no longer buy
Excuse from mortality
And verses die in secret
Spent on a lost market

No more shall lovers wise
In speech or cipher
Keep from lascivious time
His conquest. Never.