This is also a reference to the Sybil who is mentioned in the poem's epigram, and who was granted "as many years of life as sands that were in her hand." The poem's reference in this line to the Sybil's wish echoes the original story's inversion of tone; just as her wish mutates into something deeply awful and ugly, so does the poem's offering of "fear in a handful of dust" punctuate the previous passage about the "shadow rising behind" versus the "shadow rising before" the reader.