The Carver

See, as the carver carves a rose, A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye, In cruel granite, to disclose The soft things that in hardness lie, So this one, taking up his heart, Which time and change had made a stone, Carved out of it with dolorous art, Laboring yearlong and alone, The thing there hidden—rose, toad, wing? A frog's hand on a lily pad? Bees in a cobweb?—no such thing! A girl's head was the thing he had, Small, shapely, richly crowned with hair, Drowsy, with eyes half closed, as they Looked through you and beyond you, clear To something farther than Cathay: Saw you, yet counted you not worth The seeing, thinking all the while How, flower-like, beauty comes to birth; And thinking this, began to smile. Medusa! For she could not see The world she turned to stone and ash. Only herself she saw, a tree That flowered beneath a lightning-flash. Thus dreamed her face—a lovely thing To worship, weep for, or to break . . . Better to carve a claw, a wing, Or, if the heart provide, a snake.