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Calm as a long-forgotten marble god who smiles, Colossal, in the grim serenity of stone, Upon the broken pillars lying all alone Athwart the horizon's infinite and yellow miles; Whom neither desert darkness nor the desert noon, Nor dawns that render terrible the bare dead land; Nor winds that wrap his mighty form in palls of sand, Nor the Medusa of the dumb and stony moon, Shall evermore dismay, nor lion, nor the lynx With silken-sheathèd claws and eyes of golden glede; Nor any griffin, from the gates of treasure freed To roam the gulfs, nor any wild and wandering sphinx:— Even thus, amid the waste of all fair things that were, Of high marmoreal dreams immense and overthrown, I wait forever, and about my face is blown The sand of crumbling cenotaph and sepulcher.