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.”