Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?
What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging
Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?
What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic
Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,
Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,
And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had mangled;—
What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died unrequited,
And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,
Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and slighted,