Lady, how can it chance--yet this we see <br />In long experience--that will longer last <br />A living image carved from quarries vast <br />Than its own maker, who dies presently? <br />Cause yieldeth to effect if this so be, <br />And even Nature is by Art at surpassed; <br />This know I, who to Art have given the past, <br />But see that Time is breaking faith with me. <br />Perhaps on both of us long life can I <br />Either in color or in stone bestow, <br />By now portraying each in look and mien; <br />So that a thousand years after we die, <br />How fair thou wast, and I how full of woe, <br />And wherefore I so loved thee, may be seen.<br /><br />Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-vittoria-colonna-sonnet-v/
