Poems (Mary Coleridge)/Poem 62

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LXII ON A BAS-RELIEF OF PELOPS AND HIPPODAMEIA Which was wrecked and lay many years under the sea.
Thus did a nameless and immortal hand Make of rough stone, the thing least like to life, The husband and the wifeThat the Most High, ere His creation, planned.Hundreds of years they lay, unsunned, unscanned, Where the waves cut more smoothly th!!an 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 lengthA perfect thing was rescued from the deep.

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