THREE FACES

By Algernon Charles Swinburne

The sky and sea glared hard and bright and blank:

Down the one steep street, with slow steps firm and free,

A tall girl paced, with eyes too proud to thank

The sky and sea.

One dead flat sapphire, void of wrath or glee,

Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to bank

The weary Mediterranean, drear to see.

More deep, more living, shone her eyes that drank

The breathless light and shed again on me,

Till pale before their splendour waned and shrank

The sky and sea.