Beauty Projected

When such contingency as on me now attends
Shall sweetly decease, and in her recombine
The favored fragments of chance, and when no more contends

The new flesh with aged figments,
And fair the arrangements
Of hair's fall 'round face, and the twofold grace
Of soul clothed in such skin- let me lose me therein,
Or else waste the while
In the crescence of curve that's the bend of her smile.

Hopes of this- 'til pure form be configured within her,
She lives only in thought, and thought fails me to win her,
That of her semblance casts only faintest reflection,
Shadow of the fair shades that comprise her complexion.

-Thomas Banks-
-2002-