One day in the world’s youth, long, long ago,
Before the golden hair of Time grew grey,
The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play,
Was swept by sudden music soft and low;
And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow,
And gave a new and dripping goddess birth,
Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth,
With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow.
And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown
A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled
For ages by the surf, and that has grown
More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old,
With every line made vague, so that the stone
Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.