• This sea, deep furrowed as the face of Time,
• Mirrors the ghost of the removed moon;
• The peaks stand bristling round the waste lagune,
• While up the difficult summit steeply climb
• Youth, m Manhood, Age, one triple labouring mime;
• And to the measure of some mystic rune
• Lo! Hark how the restless waters importune
• These echoing steeps with chime & counterchime.

• What seek they? Lo, upreared against the rock
• 10The Sphinx Time's visible silence, frontleted
• With p Psyche wings, with eagle plumes arched oer.
• Ah, when those everlasting lips unlock
• And the old riddle of the world is read,
• What shall man find? or seeks he Evermore?

   

• Lo, the three seekers! Youth has sprung the first
• To question the Unknown: but see! he sinks
• Prone to the earth,—becomes himself a sphinx,—
• A riddle of early death no love may burst.
• Sorely anhungered, heavily athirst
• For knowledge, Manhood next to reach the Truth
• Peers in those eyes; till, haggard & uncouth
• Week Weak Eld renews that question long rehearsed.

• Oh! and what answer? From the sad sea brim
• 10The eyes of o' the Sphinx stare through the
• midnight spell,
• Unwavering,—man's eternal quest to quell:
• While round the rock-steps of her throne doth swim
• Through the wind-serried wave the moon's faint rim,
• Sole answer from the heaven invisible.

D. G. Rossetti.

1882.