Classic Poem

Women in mirrors, I am told, may see
The wings of beauty as, with anxious eye,
They trace the legend of mortality
And day by day watch the old magic die.
In different wise, I in my glass behold
The flight of what no springtime can replace,
And start with terror of things grim and old
When chance confronts me with my mirrored face—
Where the long seasons have engraven deep
So many an epitaph of satiric rhyme
And sent so many a flaming light to sleep
And branded immortality so with time,
That where a stranger might see youth alone
I view the ghosts of things that now are gone.