Mine? A book is known by them that read That same. Thy public in my screed Is listed. Well! Some score years hence Behold mine audience, As we had seen him yesterday. Scrawny, be-spectacled, out at heels, Such an one as the world feels A sort of curse against its guzzling And its age-lasting wallow for red greed And yet; full speed Though it should run for its own getting, Will turn aside to sneer at 'Cause he hath No coin, no will to snatch the aftermath Of Mammon. Such an one as women draw away from For the tobacco ashes scattered on his coat And sith his throat Show razor's unfamiliarity And three days' beard: Such an one picking a ragged Backless copy from the stall, Too cheap for cataloguing, Loquitur, "Ah-eh! the strange rare name.... Ah-eh! He must be rare if even _I_ have not.... And lost mid-page Such age As his pardons the habit, He analyzes form and thought to see How I 'scaped immortality. Scriptor Ignotus Ferrara 1715 To K.R.H. "When I see thee as some poor song-bird Battering its wings, against this cage we Today, Then would I speak comfort unto thee, From out the heights I dwell in, when That great sense of power is upon me And I see my greater soul-self bending Sibylwise with that great forty year epic That you know of, yet unwrit But as some child's toy 'tween my fingers, And see the sculptors of new ages carve me thus, And model with the music of my couplets in their hearts: Surely if in the end the epic And the small kind deed are one; If to God the child's toy and the epic are the same, E'en so, did one make a child's toy, He might wright it well And cunningly, that the child might Keep it for his children's children And all have joy thereof. Dear, an this dream come true, Then shall all men say of thee "She 'twas that played him power at life's morn, And at the twilight Evensong, And God's peace dwelt in the mingled chords She drew from out the shadows of the past, And old world melodies that else He had known only in his dreams Of Iseult and of Beatrice. Dear, an this dream come true, I, who being poet only, Can give thee poor words only, Add this one poor other tribute, This thing men call immortality. A gift I give thee even as Ronsard gave it. Seeing before time, one sweet face grown old, And seeing the old eyes grow bright From out the border of Her fire-lit wrinkles, As she should make boast unto her maids "Ronsard hath sung the beauty, _my_ beauty, Of the days that I was fair."