XXXV.
The day glared through the eastern rim
Of rocky peaks, as prison bars;
With light as dim as distant stars
The sultry sunbeams filter'd down
Through misty phantoms weird and dim,
Through shifting shapes bat-wing'd brown.
Like some vast ruin wrapp'd in flame
The sun fell down before them now.
Behind them wheel'd white peaks of snow,
As they proceeded.
Gray and grim
And awful objects went and came
Before them then. They pierced at last
The desert's middle depths, and lo!
There loom'd from out the desert vast
A lonely ship, well-built and trim,
And perfect all in hull and mast.
No storm had stain'd it any whit,
No seasons set their teeth in it.
Her masts were white as ghosts, and tall;
Her decks were as of yesterday.
The rains, the elements, and all
The moving things that bring decay
By fair green lands or fairer seas,
Had touch'd not here for centuries.
Lo! date had lost all reckoning,
And Time had long forgotten all
In this lost land, and no new thing
Or old could anywise befall,
Or morrows, or a yesterday,
For Time went by the other way.
The ages have not any course
Across this untrack'd waste.
The sky
Wears here one blue, unbending hue,
The heavens one unchanging mood.
The far still stars they filter through
The heavens, falling bright and bold
Against the sands as beams of gold.
The wide, white moon forgets her force;
The very sun rides round and high,
As if to shun this solitude.
What dreams of gold or conquest drew
The oak-built sea-king to these seas,
Ere Earth, old Earth, unsatisfied,
Rose up and shook man in disgust
From off her wearied breast, and threw
And smote his cities down, and dried
These measured, town-set seas to dust?
What captain knew
The straits that led to lands like these?
Blew south-sea breeze or north-sea breeze?
What spiced winds whistled through this sail?
What banners stream'd above these seas?
And what strange seaman answer'd back
To other sea-king's beck and hail,
That blew across his foamy track!
Sought Jason here the golden fleece?
Came Trojan ship or ships of Greece?
Came decks dark-mann'd from sultry Ind,
Woo'd here by spacious wooing wind?
So like a grand, sweet woman, when
A great love moves her soul to men?
Came here strong ships of Solomon
In quest of Ophir by Cathay?...
Sit down and dream of seas withdrawn,
And every sea-breath drawn away....
Sit down, sit down!
What is the good
That we go on still fashioning
Great iron ships or walls of wood,
High masts of oak, or any thing?
Lo! all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky.