“Marble, my white girl, marble! Cyprian thighs
And amorous bosom all made chaste once more,
As though no lips had ever kissed thine eyes
To slumber—virgin as they were, before
The feet of Venus glowed along the floor!...
“Thy beauty should have made the workman blind
That found thee buried in the dust of thrones
Hereafter, when our pomps are left behind
Like some strange, sprawling scale of barbarous tones,
Our temples turned to curious heaps of stones;
“When by the highways merchant folk shall go
Three feet of earth above our walls and towers,
And other than Grecian ships bear to and fro
New wares, new men, and all as brief as flowers—
Thou hadst outlasted all that time devours.
“But thou art dead; thou art flesh and art dead;
The grave will be thy lover, thy round breast
Nourish the worm, while, shred by ghastly shred,
The mouth that laughed, the fingers that caressed,
Wither, O dearest of my works and best!...
“What have I gained? some mornings when my soul
Leaped out of me into the arms of day,
When the world, like a chariot, span in my own control,
Times when I saw the beech-tree leaves a-sway
And knew how green they were and far from grey.
“Say I learned joy—this was indeed a gain;
But can I face the reckoning unafraid?
For joy I bartered, first, that ancient pain
Which stabbed me into vision; next, betrayed
All that men looked for in me; thus I paid.
“Yea, I that rated at a small amount
That strange, cold jewel, purchased unawares,
Men’s gratitude—I that no longer count
For anything in any man’s affairs,
Am doubtful now; thus the gods grant our prayers.
“Ay me undone! The world cries out to me:
‘Pygmalion the sculptor, where art thou?’—
Buried indeed, O buried hopelessly
Fathom-deep under, fathom-deep under now—
The curious rootlets pry about his brow ...
“There is no remedy; what is changed is changed;
No skill can rub out wrinkles from the heart,
Nor even God knit friends that are estranged
As innocently again as at the start,
Since they must keep the memory of that smart
“For good or evil still. So I return
Never to that old quiet which asked no beat
Of answering pulse, content alone to burn,
While no fierce hand might fret thy bosom sweet,
Nor any lover come betwixt thy feet.