Palmyra

Listless and weary silently we crouch
Under the sun's intolerable face,
For ever forward heaving dreamily,
Each on his camel with a noiseless foot,
Swift, sure, and silent like the feet of Time,
And nose protruding level on the air :
Our brilliant-hued and flowing-vested guards
Drowsily bowing to the camel -stride.
Our shadows blotted sharp upon the sand.
And ne'er a sound but in the barrel slung,
A gurgling as of wells among the palms !

Anon the imperial tyrant unaware
Declines from empire of the blinding skies.
Some tall mysterious tomb-towers that seemed
To mock us with the promise of their shade
Through the long day now stand upon their heights
Ghostlike and near, until as in a dream
We pass the portals of them, and we solve
That ashen-grey enigma of the hills.
Then bursts upon our breathless souls a sight
Such as they say shall opening overwhelm
The waking vision of the sons of God,
Emergent from the pilgrimage of life.

Behold ! amid the illimitable waste
Abides a city glorious with gold
Of arch triumphal, leaguelong colonnade,
Palace and fane with pediment and frieze,
While dominating, mighty like a mountain,
Mounts from their midst the Temple of the
Sun,
Eternal based upon stupendous blocks
Poised there by genii, slaves of Solomon.
See yonder, palms — ah ! grateful gush of green,
And cool mild flash of water soothing eyes
Cowering from such severity of light !

Ere full the vision enraptured we behold,
Lo ! we are sweeping swiftly to the plain
Nigh the enchanted city. Do I wake,
Or weave some glowing fabric in a dream ?
I only know the weariness hatii passed,
With all oppression on the fevered frame,
All thirst and hunger : I could deem me borne
Out of myself, and mingled with the world !
Why do I weep? we wander in and out
Fair lucent springing arches cored with fire,
By many a votive column, over fret
Fantastic fine of broken tracery.
Loves, fruit, and flowers glowing underfoot.
A silvery serpent-coil is in the eyes
Of yon stone fragment of a hero's head !
Sealike about me sets the wilderness
To realms untravelled ; saving where we came ;
For there the mountains purple rich with eve,
While many a pillar sunders them with gold,
A mouldering castle of the Saracens
Crowning them, dark athwart the heavenly fire.

Anon among the ruins calls the wind
Whirling the desert in wild revelry,
Crumbled beneath fierce suns of centuries
To sand, and sifted of the searching blast.
Mounding it pale about the ways and walls
Where once Zenobia, queen of all the East,
Flushed and elate with empire and with youth
Drove in her chariot, girt with flaming swords
And dark adoring faces of her lovers.
Flashing another morning from her eyes,
Borne as on wings of music royally I
How long before she looked from yonder height
Her mournful last upon the shattered glory
Of her sweet kingdom with a clouded eye,
Or proudly turned, a captive yet a queen,
Away for ever with Aurelian ?
Now the fair city is a skeleton
Whose shell but serves to tcssellate blue air.
Now the fair ways once resonant with life,
Vibrant with pulses of world-history,
Feel only stealthy feet of the lean wolf
(Jr prowling fox ; save where our Bedawy
Rush galloping with wild barbaric yell
Poising the ijuivered lance in mimic charge,
Wheeling and spurning dust, mayhap of men
To cloud about them— spirits of the blast !
Incarnate winds as lawless and as wild !
Dim limbless Chaos here with Anarchy
And Desolation holds high carnival,
Welters carousing, laughing loud and long
In maniac triumph of reconquering
His ancient lair where once the God of life
Brooded to quicken formless elements
Into a throbbing heart of all mankind !

Dread exultation of primeval Powers
In all-exhaustless fountain of your youth,
Dread celebration of your victory !
And your eternal birthday, in the place
Where ye abode before King Solomon,
And darkling played about the feet of God !
Where ye abide now after the brief hour
That shone with human empire, now the worm
Hath fouled sweet tresses of the queen of men.
And loathly things have littered in her breast !
In your grand triumph, awful yet sublime,
I bear a part, exulting deep with you.
Albeit I weep, remembering what we are !
And yet I know these lives of ours not lost,
Exhaling to enhance the life of God,
Life of all ages freshening evermore ! . . .
For us, dear friend with whom I wandered there.
For us the lovely ruin had a voice,
A human message : after then we ranged
Apart, afar ; our feeling and our thought
Have known a change ; still you may call to mind
That argent moon upfloating large and pure
In dark blue night above the solemn temple
And hush of palm and water ; how we lay
Under the open wakeful very long,
So strange and so entrancing all the night I
Ah I soon, how soon, we surely shall decline,
Fade to the indistinguishable whole.
But when the moon shall silver soft our sleep.
Still fair Palmyra beautiful in death
Shall thrill with her weird silence like a spirit
Souls yet unborn to wistful questioning ;
They too like fearful children shall implore
And call, nor ever they, nor any one.
Shall hear an answer floating firom the void !