When Vanity kissed Vanity

When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he
pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever
know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death:

"Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said . . . yet Beauty
vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead . . .

—Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair:

"Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his
sonnet there" . . . So all my words, however true, might sing
you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were
Beauty for an afternoon.