Perchance he shaped this dainty head

For some brown girl that Scorned his passion.

But he is dust: we may not know

His happy or unhappy story:

Nameless and dead these thousand years,

His work outlives him—there’s his glory!

Both man and jewel lay in earth

Beneath a lava-buried city;

The thousand summers came and went,

With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity.