From the renascence of wonder
There came gliding a Greek sculpture,
Falling through the cascades of time
Bridging the chasm that did rupture
When I first got a glimpse of him -
A winged creature still in its flight,
Stilled by the sculptor's moving hands,
The Cherubim of my deep delight.

Between the pillars of slow curves
Crowned by the heroic arches,
I saw the flutter of those wings
Whose wide span of stony weight lurches
Heavy on the air beneath it,
Which had half blown the drapery
That was to conceal his body's
Well alligned, sinewy tapestry.

With both his legs lost in a leap
He stood frozen in his motion,
Like the sparkle of the lightning
Caught bursting into full proportion,
On the night sky brooding behind,
And a single star with its wild gaze
Spreading through the wide firmament
Its mellowed twinkling beams in the haze.

And the broad pedestal of stone,
Forming the ageless substratum,
Unswelled and full of compactness,
Bore the huge load of age-old tiresome
Through the foot of that Cherubim,
With nerves heaving undulations
Like the soft, silent waves risen
In the calm of a sun-bathed ocean.