XXII.

Like some great serpent black and still, Old Morgan's men stole down the hill. Far down the steep they wound and wound Until the black line touched that land

Of gleaming white and silver sand That knows not human sight or sound. How broken plunged the steep descent; How barren! Desolate, and rent

By earthquake's shock, the land lay dead, With dust and ashes on its head. ‘ Twas as some old world overthrown, Where Theseus fought and Sappho dreamed

In eons ere they touched this land, And found their proud souls foot and hand Bound to the flesh and stung with pain. An ugly skeleton it seem'd

Of its own self. The fiery rain Of red volcanoes here had sown The death of cities of the plain. The very devastation gleamed.

All burnt and black, and rent and seam'd, Ay, vanquished quite and overthrown, And torn with thunder-stroke, and strown With cinders, lo! the dead earth lay

As waiting for the judgment day. Why, tamer men had turn'd and said, On seeing this, with start and dread, And whisper'd each with gather'd breath,

“We come on the confines of death.” They wound below a savage bluff That lifted, from its sea-mark'd base, Great walls with characters cut rough

And deep by some long-perish'd race; And lo! strange beasts unnamed, unknown, Stood hewn and limn'd upon the stone. The iron hoofs sank here and there,

Plough'd deep in ashes, broke anew Old broken idols, and laid bare Old bits of vessels that had grown, As countless ages cycled through,

Imbedded with the common stone. A mournful land as land can be Beneath their feet in ashes lay, Beside that dread and dried-up sea;

A city older than that gray And grass-grown tower builded when Confusion cursed the tongues of men. Beneath, before, a city lay

That in her majesty had shamed The wolf-nursed conqueror of old; Below, before, and far away There reach'd the white arm of a bay,

A broad bay shrunk to sand and stone, Where ships had rode and breakers roll'd When Babylon was yet unnamed, And Nimrod's hunting-fields unknown.

Some serpents slid from out the grass That grew in tufts by shatter'd stone, Then hid beneath some broken mass That Time had eaten as a bone

Is eaten by some savage beast; An everlasting palace feast. A dull-eyed rattlesnake that lay All loathsome, yellow-skinn'd, and slept,

Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun, With flat head through the centre run, Struck blindly back, then rattling crept Flat-bellied down the dusty way...

‘ Twas all the dead land had to say. Two pink-eyed hawks, wide-wing'd and gray, Scream'd savagely, and, circling high, And screaming still in mad dismay,

Grew dim and died against the sky... ‘ Twas all the heavens had to say. The grasses fail'd, and then a mass Of brown, burnt cactus ruled the land,

And topt the hillocks of hot sand, Where scarce the horned toad could pass. Then stunted sage on either hand, All loud with odors, spread the land.

The sun rose right above, and fell As falling molten as they pass'd. Some low-built junipers at last, The last that o'er the desert look'd,

Thick-bough'd, and black as shapes of hell Where dumb owls sat with bent bills hook'd Beneath their wings awaiting night, Rose up, then faded from the sight:

Then not another living thing Crept on the sand or kept the wing. White Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! Vast sepulchre of buried sea!

What dim ghosts hover on thy rim, What stately-manner'd shadows swim Along thy gleaming waste of sands And shoreless limits of dead lands?

Dread Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! White place of ghosts, give up thy dead: Give back to Time thy buried hosts! The new world's tawny Ishmaelite,

The roving tent-born Shoshonee, Who shuns thy shores as death, at night, Because thou art so white, so dread, Because thou art so ghostly white,

Because thou hast thy buried hosts, Has named thy shores “the place of ghosts.” Thy white uncertain sands are white With bones of thy unburied dead

That will not perish from the sight. They drown but perish not,— ah me! What dread unsightly sights are spread Along this lonesome dried-up sea.

White Azteckee, give up to me Of all thy prison'd dead but one, That now lies bleaching in the sun, To tell what strange allurements lie

Within this dried-up oldest sea, To tempt men to its heart and die. Old, hoar, and dried-up sea! so old! So strewn with wealth, so sown with gold!

Yea, thou art old and hoary white With time, and ruin of all things; And on thy lonesome borders night Sits brooding as with wounded wings.

The winds that toss'd thy waves and blew Across thy breast the blowing sail, And cheer'd the hearts of cheering crew From farther seas, no more prevail.

Thy white-wall'd cities all lie prone, With but a pyramid, a stone, Set head and foot in sands to tell The tired stranger where they fell.

The patient ox that bended low His neck, and drew slow up and down Thy thousand freights through rock-built town Is now the free-born buffalo.

No longer of the timid fold, The mountain sheep leaps free and bold His high-built summit and looks down From battlements of buried town.

Thine ancient steeds know not the rein; They lord the land; they come, they go At will; they laugh at man; they blow A cloud of black steeds o'er the plain.

Thy monuments lie buried now, The ashes whiten on thy brow, The winds, the waves, have drawn away, The very wild man dreads to stay.

O! thou art very old. I lay, Made dumb with awe and wonderment, Beneath a palm before my tent, With idle and discouraged hands,

Not many days agone, on sands Of awful, silent Africa. Long gazing on her mighty shades, I did recall a semblance there

Of thee. I mused where story fades From her dark brow and found her fair. A slave, and old, within her veins There runs that warm, forbidden blood

That no man dares to dignify In elevated song. The chains That held her race but yesterday

Hold still the hands of men. Forbid Is Ethiop. The turbid flood Of prejudice lies stagnant still,

And all the world is tainted. Will And wit lie broken as a lance Against the brazen mailed face Of old opinion.

None advance Steel-clad and glad to the attack, With trumpet and with song. Look back! Beneath yon pyramids lie hid

The histories of her great race. Old Nilus rolls right sullen by, With all his secrets. Who shall say:

My father rear'd a pyramid; My brother clipp'd the dragon's wings; My mother was Semiramis? Yea, harps strike idly out of place;

Men sing of savage Saxon kings New-born and known but yesterday, And Norman blood presumes to say.... Nay, ye who boast ancestral name

And vaunt deeds dignified by time Must not despise her. Who hath worn Since time began a face that is

So all-enduring, old like this — A face like Africa's? Behold! The Sphinx is Africa. The bond

Of silence is upon her. Old And white with tombs, and rent and shorn; With raiment wet with tears, and torn,

And trampled on, yet all untamed; All naked now, yet not ashamed,— The mistress of the young world's prime, Whose obelisks still laugh at Time,

And lift to heaven her fair name, Sleeps satisfied upon her fame. Beyond the Sphinx, and still beyond, Beyond the tawny desert-tomb

Of Time; beyond tradition, loom And lift ghostlike from out the gloom Her thousand cities, battle-torn And gray with story and with time.

Her very ruins are sublime, Her thrones with mosses overborne Make velvets for the feet of Time. She points a hand and cries: “Go read

The letter'd obelisks that lord Old Rome, and know my name and deed. My archives these, and plunder'd when I had grown weary of all men.”

We turn to these; we cry: “Abhorr'd Old Sphinx, behold, we cannot read!” And yet my dried-up desert sea Was populous with blowing sail,

And set with city, white-wall'd town, All mann'd with armies bright with mail, Ere yet that awful Sphinx sat down To gaze into eternity,

Or Egypt knew her natal hour, Or Africa had name or power.