With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,
The perfect song, or in remoter days
Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek;
But I am not as they,—and dare not speak
Of you unworthily, and dare not praise
Perfection with imperfect roundelays,
And desecrate the prize I dare to seek.
“I do not woo you, then, by fashioning
Vext analogues ’twixt you and Guenevere,
Nor do I come with agile lips that bring