Classic Poem

Above my mantelshelf there stands
A little bronze sarcophagus,
Carved by its unknown artist's hands,
With this one word — A MORIBUS !

Along the lid a Love lies dead —
Across his breast his broken bow;
Elsewhere they dig his tiny bed,
And round it women wailing go:

A trick, a toy — mere " Paris ware,"
Some Quartier-Latin sculptor's whim,
Wrought in a fit of mock despair,
With sight, it may be, something dim,

Because the love of yesterday
Had left the grenier , light Musette ,
And she who made the morrow gay,
L UTINE or M IMI , was not yet —

A toy. But ah! what hopes deferred
(O friend, with sympathetic eye!),
What vows (now decently interred)
Within that " narrow compass" lie!

For there, last night, not sadly, too,
With one live ember I cremated
A nest of cooing billets-doux ,
That just two decades back were dated.