Sometimes I see, caught in a snare,

One with a foolish lovely face,

Who stands with scattered moon-struck air

Along, in a wild woody place.

She was entrapped there long ago.

Yet fowler none has come to see

His prize; though all the tree-trunks show

A front of silent treachery.

And there she waits, while in her flesh

Small joyless teeth fret without rest.

But she stands smiling in the mesh,

While she is duped and dispossest.

I know her name; for it is told

That beauty is a prisoner,

And that her gaoler, bleak and bold,

Scores her fine flesh, and murders her.

He slays her with invisible hands,

And inly wastes her flesh away,

And strangles her with stealthy bands;

Melts her as snow day after day.

Within his thicket life decays

And slow is changed by hidden guile;

And nothing now of Beauty stays,

Save her divine and witless smile.

For stull she smiles, and does not know

Her feet are in the snaring lime.

He who entrapped her long ago,

And kills her, is unpitying Time.