Classic Poem

I wonder when will women know the glories they suggest to us:
If I were fit to sing to them of all that they inspire,
Their dalliance to open up the Kingdom of the Blest to us
Would still be no less graced than hers who had a god to sire.

For queens they are, forgetful of the weight their brows has belted,
No longer crowned above us all by aching diadems;
Some god put Lethe in the cup wherein the pearl was melted;
And golden heads have still to hear that Troy went down in flames.

It surely cannot be that I, alone of men, remember
The old mad grandeur and the days of glory gone to waste;
Because here Beauty gleams as fair as boughs rimed in December,
And witless wears the ribbands for which helmets were unlaced?

And yet they look as though none heard what fortresses were wrecked for them.
What armies squandered, for a smile, the sister of all Force;
What waters turned to wells of wine when battlements were decked for them:
O why should I that Past recall which makes the Present worse?

It may be that our Present is for all the Past an Hades;
A parody of Kings and Queens, and Beauty's paradigm;
It may be Time's Magnificat must name no living ladies;
It may be that Forgetfulness excels a poet's rhyme.