On a Bas-relief of Pelops and Hippodameia

Thus did a nameless and immortal hand
Make of rough stone, the thing least like to life,
The husband and the wife
That the Most High, ere His creation, planned.
Hundreds of years they lay, unsunned, un-scanned,
Where the waves cut more smoothly than the knife,
What time the winds tossed them about in strife.
And filled those lips and eyes with the soft sand.

Art, that from Nature stole the human form
By slow device of brain, by simple strength,
Lent it to Nature's artless force to keep.

So with the human sculptor wrought the storm
To round those lines of beauty, till at length
A perfect thing was rescued from the deep.