THE MEDUSA OF DESPAIR
I may not mask forever with the grace
Of woven flow’rs thine eyes of staring stone:
Ere fatally I front thee, fully known
The guarded horror of thy haggard face,
Thy visage carven from the heart long dead
Of some white, frozen star; ere thou astound
My life to thine own likeness, and confound—
Depart, and curse more kindred things instead:
Triumphant, through what realms of elder doom
Where even the swart vans of Time are stunned,
Seek thou some fit, Cimmerian citadel,
And mighty cities, desolate, unsunned,
Whose walls of horrent and enormous gloom
Make sharp the horizon of the light of hell!