My lord, hearing lately of your opulence in promises and your house

Busy with parasites, of your hands full of favours, your statutes

Admirable as music and no fear of your arms not prospering, I have

Considered how to serve you and breed from my talents

Those few secrets which I shall make plain

To your intelligent glory

And so this splendid poem goes on. There is no reason why it should ever stop, for it is plain that under the guise of architect speaking to patron the poet is speaking to his reader, and speaking about his poem even as he writes it. For the building is ‘like an argument’, and the chambers in it ‘not less suitably shadowed than the heart’. The poem does not even explore the relationship, actual or ideal, of poet and reader; the poem is the poem's subject—that is all. And this of course is significant. For if the structures of expression are more interesting to the reader than the structures of experience behind them, the only way to induce the right sort of attention in the reader is to have nothing behind them at all, that is to have poems that are meaningless. The only alternative is to have poems that talk about themselves, as Prince's does.