These last lines suggest, what many poets have asserted, that the
goddess of beauty is apt to change her habitation from one clay to
another, and that the poet who clings to the fair form after she has
departed, is nauseated by the dead bones which he clasps. [Footnote: See
Thomas Hardy's novel, _The Well Beloved_.] This theme Rupert Brooke
is constantly harping upon, notably in _Dead Men's Love_, which
begins,

There was a damned successful poet,
There was a woman like the Sun.
And they were dead. They did not know it.
They did not know his hymns
Were silence; and her limbs
That had served love so well,
Dust, and a filthy smell.

The feeling that Aphrodite is leading them a merry chase through
manyforms is characteristic of our ultra-modern poets, who anticipate at
least one new love affair a year. Most elegantly Ezra Pound expresses
his feeling that it is time to move on to a fresh inspiration:

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,--
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
My much praised, but not altogether satisfactory lady.

As each beautiful form is to be conceived of as reflecting eternal
beauty from a slightly different angle, the poet may claim that flitting
affection is necessary to one who would gain as complete as possible