XXII TO A LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
IN MEMORY OF METASTASIO
Nice, though your lips of coral Now are dust; And the schoolboy scans the moral Graven on your broken bust
In the gilt barocco chapel After Mass; Where ten coats with broidered lappel Bent when Nice used to pass.
Still perchance your spirit hovers Where the lute And the voices of your lovers Chimed, but now are gone and mute.
Where the lonely arbour’s hollow Shadier grows, And the butterflies can follow Fearlessly to kiss the rose.
And you smile because a poet À la mode Flouted you; and then, we know it, Wrote an abject palinode.
For your hands, though light as feathers, Held him tight: Love was made to last all weathers, Not to change with day and night.