Classic Poem

Sandys sat translating Ovid. Both his hands
Were busy. Busy was his curious mind
Each note he wrote was news from fabled lands.
He hob-nobbed with Pythagoras, calm and kind.
In a quaint narrow age, remote from this,
Sat Sandys translating Metamorphosis .

The scholarship is obsolete, and the verse
Pedestrian perhaps. Yet, while I turn.
His friendly folio pages (none the worse
For emblematic worm-holes) I discern
Not Nature preying on itself, but Time
Revealed by rich humanity in rhyme.