Sonnet Cclviii: Poem by George Henry Boker

Sing of her beauty! Sing of that which grows
My daily wonder! Shall this lute essay
To paint the color of the changing ray
That makes her eye my source of joys and woes?
Or sculpture you a statue in repose,
Lithe as her shape; or give it grace to play
Her part in motion; or a voice to say
In words, what I half hear and half suppose?
Sing of her beauty! For that hair alone
The saint would doff an aureole; and that skin
Nude Venus envies, in the Parian stone.
Lo! I have sung her beauty, and the tone
Dies on the.string, as conscious of a sin;
Yet not a feature have portrayed, I own.