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.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1927.
The author died in 1961, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.