--Ah, do not mind that--better that will look When cast in bronze--an Almaign Kaiser, that, 50 Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip. This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized? I thought you would have seen that here you sit As I imagined you--Hippolyta, Naked upon her bright Numidian horse. 55 Recall you this, then? "Carve in bold relief"-- So you commanded--"carve, against I come, A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was, Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free, Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch. 60 'Praise Those who slew Hipparchus!' cry the guests, 'While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves As erst above our champion: stand up all!'" See, I have labored to express your thought. Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms, 65 (Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, Only consenting at the branch's end They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face, The Praiser's, in the center: who with eyes Sightless, so bend they back to light inside 70 His brain where visionary forms throng up, Sings, minding not that palpitating arch Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off, Violet and parsley crowns to trample on-- 75 Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve, Devoutly their unconquerable hymn. But you must say a "well" to that--say "well!" Because you gaze--am I fantastic, sweet? Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marble--marbly 80 Even to the silence! Why, before I found The real flesh Phene, I inured myself To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff For better nature's birth by means of art: With me, each substance tended to one form 85 Of beauty--to the human archetype. On every side occurred suggestive germs Of that--the tree, the flower--or take the fruit-- Some rosy shape, continuing the peach, Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs, 90 Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang. But of the stuffs one can be master of, How I divined their capabilities! From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk 95 That yields your outline to the air's embrace, Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom; Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure To cut its one confided thought clean out Of all the world. But marble!--'neath my tools 100 More pliable than jelly--as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from depths In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself, And whence all baser substance may be worked; Refine it off to air, you may--condense it 105