Such wast thou,
Who art now
But buried dust and rusted skeleton.
Above the bones and mire,
Motionless, placed in vain,
Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years,
Sole guard of grief
Sole guard of memory
Standeth this image of the beauty sped.
“Thy gracious ways,
O Lady of my heart, have
O’er all my thought their golden glamour cast;
As amber torch-flames, where strange men-at-arms
Tread softly ‘neath the damask shield of night,
Rise from the flowing steel in part reflected,
So on my mailed thought that with thee goeth,
Though dark the way, a golden glamour falleth.”
Ezra Pound | “Canzon: Of Incense”