Canto LXXV

What hope is here for modern rhyme

      To him, who turns a musing eye

      On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie

Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?

These mortal lullabies of pain

      May bind a book, may line a box,

      May serve to curl a maiden's locks;

Or when a thousand moons shall wane

A man upon a stall may find,

      And, passing, turn the page that tells

      A grief—then changed to something else,

Sung by a long forgotten mind.

But what of that? My darken'd ways

      Shall ring with music all the same;

      To breathe my loss is more than fame,

To utter love more sweet than praise.