DEAD CITIES

Out of it all but this remains:—

I was with one who crossed wide chains

Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks

Lock in the wilds of Yucatan,

Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks —

And then a city that no man

Had ever seen; so dim and old,

No chronicle has ever told

The history of men who piled

Its temples and huge teocallis

Among mimosa-blooming valleys;

Or how its altars were defiled

With human blood; whose idols there

With eyes of stone still stand and stare.

So old the moon can only know

How old, since ancient forests grow

On mighty wall and pyramid.

Huge ceibas, whose trunks were scarred

With ages, and dense yuccas, hid

Fanes‘ mid the cacti, scarlet-starred.

I looked upon its paven ways,

And saw it in its kingliest days;

When from the lordly palace one,

A victim, walked with prince and priest,

Who turned brown faces toward the east

In worship of the rising sun:

At night ten hundred temples’ spires

On gold burnt everlasting fires.

Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan?

I know not. Only how no man

Had ever seen; and still my soul

Believes it vaster than the three.

Volcanic rock walled in the whole,

Lost in the woods as in some sea.

I only read its hieroglyphs,

Perused its monster monoliths

Of death, gigantic heads; and read

The pictured codex of its fate,

The perished Toltec; while in hate

Mad monkeys cursed me, as if dead

Priests of its past had taken form

To guard its ruined shrines from harm.