By Andrew Winter

She came to me in my tall tower locked,
She knocked, and said, “I am that beauty
Which your maker fitted for your life and nocked
Within the string of your good sense. Open,
For long have we two lived in good concourse
And I would not a stranger be nor leave
Your love-couch fully cold, nor source
The goldest good of yours in other than
Myself, appointed for your remembrance.”

But I bent o’er my quills and sheets
Nor heeded her, for some high thing I knew
Was coming soon to my poor pen, found neat
Inside the stone-locked core of my high tow’r.
And her old face I had so often seen,
And though I knew her lovely, still to lift
The latch would but again begin
A romance long-rehearsed; I knew she could not
Lift the latch herself, dainty as she was.

So loveliness and I remained, like hearts
Asunder, either side of my unblinking door,
She sitting on the top step, I apart
In weary sunset lands studious
Achieving nothing. For I knew that she,
My beauty, had no more to give me
Than I had in whimsy’s coterie.
I sought another beauty, one who would
Fulfill my wand’ring cagèd heart for good.

Andrew Winter is a senior studying English and History.