A HANDFUL OF SONNETS

By Christopher Morley

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.”