Chapter I

I have no hope to make you live in rhyme
Or with your beauty to enrich the years--
Enough for me this now, this present time;
The greater claim for greater sonneteers.
But O how covetous I am of NOW--
Dear human minutes, marred by human pains--
I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,
And all the miracles your heart contains.
I wish to study all your changing face,
Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;
I hope to win your dear unstinted grace
For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.
Then may you say, when others better prove:--
"_Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love._"