The cherry-coloured velvet of your cloak <br />Time hath not soiled: its fair embroideries <br />Gleam as when centuries ago they spoke <br />To what bright gallant of Her Daintiness, <br />Whose slender fingers, long since dust and dead, <br />For love or courtesy embroidered <br />The cherry-coloured velvet of this cloak. <br /> <br />Ah! cunning flowers of silk and silver thread, <br />That mock mortality? the broidering dame, <br />The page they decked, the kings and courts are dead: <br />Gone the age beautiful; Lorenzo's name, <br />The Borgia's pride are but an empty sound; <br />But lustrous still upon their velvet ground, <br />Time spares these flowers of silk and silver thread. <br /> <br />Gone is that age of pageant and of pride: <br />Yet don your cloak, and haply it shall seem, <br />The curtain of old time is set aside; <br />As through the sadder coloured throng you gleam; <br />We see once more fair dame and gallant gay, <br />The glamour and the grace of yesterday: <br />The elder, brighter age of pomp and pride.<br /><br />Ernest Christopher Dowson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-william-theodore-peters-on-his-renaissance-cloak/
