SEGESTA
Reading edition
21High in the secret places of the hills
Cliff-girt it stands, in grassy solitude,
No ruin but a vision unachieved.
This temple is a house not made with hands
But born of man’s incorrigible need
For permanence and beauty in the scud
And wreckage of mortality—as though
Great thoughts, communing in the noise of towns
With inward isolation and deep peace,
And dreams gold-paven for celestial feet,
Had wrought the sudden wonder; and behold,
The sky, the hills, the awful colonnade,
And, night-long woven through the fane’s august
Intercolumniations, all the stars
Processionally wheeling—
Then it was
That, having reared their wonder, it would seem
The makers feared their God might prove less great
Than man’s heart dreaming on him—and so left
The shafts unroofed, untenanted the shrine.
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