Classic Poem

For your sake, sweet, I long to stretch my hands
Into the future, filled with flowers of thought,—
To scatter these wild grasses I have brought
In summers of far-distant times and lands.
To close with Fate who wrestles and withstands
In passionate haste my eagerness has sought,
If haply might mould or fashion aught
Equal to cold eternity's demands.

For your sake I would have the people say,
“Here was a poet, and he loved, and she
Was beautiful and tender as the day—”
For your sake I would have my memory stay,
That the hair I wrote soft words about may be
Black-brown for ever, when my own is grey.