I met a traveller from an antique epoch,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of fossilized bone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered skull lies, whose frown,
And cracked jaw, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its evolution well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The claw that mocked them, and the tooth that fed;
And on the footprint, these ideas appear:
My name is Tyrannosaurus, King of Dinosaurs;
Look on my skeleton, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

the middle distance