Poets Have Chanted Mortality

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It had better been hidden
  But the Poets inform:
We are chattel and liege
  Of an undying Worm.

Were you, Will, disheartened,
  When all Stratford’s gentry
Left their Queen and took service
  In his low-lying country?

How many white cities
  And grey fleets on the storm
Have proud-builded, hard-battled,
  For this undying Worm?

Was a sweet chaste lady
  Would none of her lover.
Nay, here comes the Lewd One,
  Creeps under her cover!

Have ye said there’s no deathless
  Of face, fashion, form,
Forgetting to honor
  The extent of the Worm?

O ye laughers and light-lipped,
  Ye faithless, infirm,
I can tell you who’s constant,
  ’Tis the Eminent Worm.

Ye shall trip on no limits,
  Neither time ye your term,
In the realms of His Absloute
  Highness the Worm.

© Pindar