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,