Classic Poem

You said: “She is not young enough—and yet
She might have been worth having. What if Love,
With those strange drugs he makes of dead men's hopes,
Should trick her to a semblance of flushed youth,
Just while a kiss endures?”
Love, summoned, came,
And wrought with his old pigments, pain & fear;
Painted her lids with weeping, dusked her eyes
With gloom of sleepless midnights, shed the grey
Powder of ashen dawns upon her head,
And dimpled her thin cheeks with sobs indrawn.
Then, his work done, he set it in the light,
And laughed, and called to you.
You came & looked.
“What dream deluded me? Good God, she's old!”
“Ah, that's my patina !” Love grinned, but you:
“The thing is ruined. I refuse to pay.”