Sonnet Cclxxxii: Poem by George Henry Boker

'Tis not in hollow wood and tinkling wire
To be the wonder I would have them be;
Contrive my spells however cunningly,
They fail supremely where they most aspire.
I cannot warm me at a painted fire,
Nor make my foolish lute seem like to thee,
Save as a type of that sad history
Whose ends are shapened by the Furies' ire.
So has it been, so to the bitter end
'Twill be to us, whose fancies must invent,
To guess from shadows what the substance meant;
To live on shows and seemings, and to bend
A slavish smile on ills that almost send
Love to the cloister of the penitent.