|
I DREAMED I was a sculptor, and had wrought Out of a towering adamantine crag A mighty figure, stately, giant-limbed, And with the face of a Homeric god. Planted aloft upon the levelled cone Of a vast tumulus, that seemed to swell Above the sinking outline of the view As up from the dusk past, firm fixed it stood, Full in the face of the resplendent morn Against the deep of heaven all flecked with clouds; And I methought was glorying in my work One large arm lay upon the powerful breast, The other held a scroll. The ample head, Majestic in its dome-like curvatures, Looked heedful out with full expectant eyes Over the brightening world, and in the lines And gracious curves of nostrils and of lips You traced the use of smiles. But on the brows There pained a weight and weariness of thought, And furrows spake of care. Much, too, of doubt Shadowed the meaning of the mighty face; Much was there also in its cast, that seemed Significant of a striving to believe, To be the liege of an ancestral faith In things remote, unsecular, more the birth Of mystic than sciential lore, and thence But half assured itself.
Such was my work: |