Tennos pour Lorac

I find it strange that one as versed as you

In discontent, and having such small time

For poets, or the matter of their muse,

Would make it such an issue of the mind

To lose a book, no matter how it went;

Misplaced, or left behind, or even tossed

On this, the rubbish-heap of dreams long spent

Before the love that brought the book was lost.

For sonnets, after all, speak love to those

Who still may love, so what would you with these?

- Torment each page that it might ever close

On something you so carelessly dismiss?

I bid you, let this persecution cease…

I do not have your ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese!’

 

David Lewis Paget