The Mounds of America

Come to the mounds of death with me. They stretch
From deep to deep, sad, venerable, vast,
Graves of gone empires — gone without a sigh,
Like clouds from heaven. They stretch'd from deep to deep
Before the Roman smote his mailed hand
On the gold portals of the dreaming East;
Before the pleiad, in white trance of song,
Beyond her choir of stars went wandering.
The great old trees, rank'd on these hills of death,
Have melancholy hymns about all this;
And when the moon walks her inheritance
With slow, imperial pace, the trees look up
And chant in solemn cadence. Come and hear.
"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But listen to our words. We, too, are. old,
Though not so old as thou. The ancient towns,
The cities throned far apart like queens,
The shadowy domes, fae realms majestical,
Slept in thy younger beams. In every leaf
We hold their dust, a king in every trunk.
We, too, are very old: the wind that wails
In our broad branches, from swart Ethiop come
But now, wail'd in our branches long ago,
Then come from darken'd Calvary. The hills
Lean'd ghastly at the tale that wan wind told;
The streams crept shuddering through the dark;
The torrent of the North, from morn till eve,
On his steep ledge hung pausing; and o'er all
Such silence fell, we heard the conscious rills
Drip slowly in the caves of central earth.
So were the continents by His crowned grief
And glory bound together, ere the hand
Of Albion tamed the far Atlantic: so
Have we, whose aspect faced that time, the right
Of language unto all, while memory holds.
"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But hear our words. We know that thou didst see
The whole that we would utter — thou that werl
A worship unto realms beyond the flood —
But we are very lonesome on these mounds,
And speech doth make the burden of sad thought
Endurable; while these, the people new,
That take our land, may haply learn from us
What wonder went before them; for no word
E'er came from thee, so beautiful, so lone,
Throned in thy still domain, superbly calm
And silent as a god.
Here empires rose and died;
Their very dust, beyond the Atlantic borne
In the pale navies of the charter'd wind,
Stains the white Alp. Here the proud city ranged
Spire after spire, like star ranged after star,
Along the dim empyrean, till the air
Went mad with splendour, and the dwellers cried,
' Our walls have married Time!' — Gone are the marts,
The insolent citadels, the fearful gates,
The glorious domes that rose like summer clouds;
Gone are their very names! The royal ghost
Cannot discern the old imperial haunts,
But goes about perplexed like a mist
Between a ruin and the awful stars.
Nations are laid beneath our feet. The bard
Who stood in Song's prevailing light, as stands
The apocalyptic angel in the sun,
And rain'd melodious fire on all the realms;
The prophet pale, who shudder'd in his gloom,
As the white cataract shudders in its mist;
The hero shattering an old kingdom down
With one clear trumpet's peal; the boy, the sage,
Subject and lord, the beautiful, the wise —
Gone, gone to nothingness.
"The years glide on,
The pitiless years; and all alike shall fail,
State after state rear'd by the solemn sea,
Or where the Hudson goes unchallenged past
The ancient warder of the Palisades,
Or where, rejoicing o'er the enormous cloud,
Beam the blue Alleganies — all shall fail:
The Ages chant their dirges on the peaks;
The palls are ready in the peopled vales;
And nations fill one common sepulchre.
Nor goes the Earth on her dark way alone.
Each star in yonder vault doth hold the dead
In its funereal deeps: Arcturus broods
Over vast sepulchres that had grown old
Before the Earth was made: the universe
Is but one mighty cemetery,
Rolling around its central, solemn sun.
"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But listen to our words. We, too, must die —
And thou! — the vassal stars shall fail to hear
Thy queenly voice over the azure fields
Calling at sunset. They shall facie. The Earth
Shall look, and miss their sweet, familiar eyes,
And crouching die beneath the feet of God.
Then come the glories, then the nobler times,
For which the Orbs travail'd in sorrow; then
The mystery shall be clear, the burden gone;
And surely men shall know why nations came
Transfigured for the pangs; why not a spot
Of this wide world but hath a tale of wo;
Why all this glorious universe is Death's.
"Go, Moon! and tell the stars, and tell the suns,
Impatient of the wo, the strength of Hoi
Who doth consent to death; and tell the climes
That meet thy mournful eyes, one after one,
Through all the lapses of the lonesome night,
The pathos of repose, the might of Death!"
The voice, is hush'd; the great old wood is still:
The moon, like one in meditation, walks
Behind a cloud. We, too, have theme for thought,
While, as a sun, God takes the west of Time
And smites the pyramid of Eternity.
The shadow lengthens over many worlds
Doom'd to the dark mausoleum and mound.