sonnet

Love, let me sing the splendor of your thighs And that soft line irradiating from

Your back, nor to false modesty succumb: These are as chaste and lovely as your eyes.

The shoulder's softness and the breast's surmise, The silken waist nor the sweet buttocks shun,

Nor last though Love, there be a shamefast some Who would defame it with a false surmise -

Last, last and loveliest, that store of wealth

Lies hidden in the sanctuary place

Where love alone may enter and not die. Although if the intruder there by stealth Be smitten, having ravaged for a space, I should not grudge it, were the intruder I.

one

William V. Stone

22