Who art thou? old Mound Builder! Where dost thou come from? Womb of what country, Womb of what woman Gave birth to thee? Who was thy sire? Who thy sire's sire? And who were his forbears? Cam'st thou from Asia? Where the race swarms like fireflies, Where many races mark. As with colored belts, its tropics! What pigment stained thy skin? Was it a red, or wert thou Olive-dyed, or brassy? Handsome thou couldst hardly have been, With those high cheek-bones, That mighty jaw, and its grim chops, That long skull, so broad at the back parts, That low, retreating forehead! Doubtless thine eyes were dark, Like fire-moons set in their sockets; Doubtless thine hair was black, Coarse, matted, long, and electric; Thy skeleton that of a giant! Well fleshed, well lashed with muscles, As with an armor of iron; And doubtless thou wert a brave fellow, On the old earth, in thy time. I think I know thee, old Mole! Earth delver, mound builder, mine worker! I think I have met thee before, In times long since, and forgotten; Many thousands of years, it may be, Or ever old Noah, the bargeman, Or he, the mighty Deucalion, Wroth with the world as he found it, Uprose in a passion of storm And smote with his fist the sluices, The water sluices of Cloudland-- Locked in the infinite azure-- Drowning the plains and mountains, The shaggy beasts and hybrids, The nameless birds--and the reptiles, Monstrous in bulk and feature, Which alone were thy grim contemporaries. Here, in the State of Wisconsin, In newly discovered America, I, curious to know what secrets Were hid in the mounds of thy building, Have gone down into their chambers, Into their innermost grave-crypts, Unurning dry bones and skulls, Fragments of thy mortality! Oftentimes near to the surface Of these thy conical earth-runes, --For who shall tell their secret?-- Meeting with strange interlopers, Bodies of red Winnebagoes, Each with its bow and its arrows, Each with its knife and its war gear, Its porphyry-carved tobacco pipe, Modern, I know by the fashioning. Often, I asked of them, As they lay there so silently, So stiff and stark in their bones, What right they had in these old places, Sacred to dead men of a race they knew not? And oh! the white laughters, The wicked malice of the white laughters Which they laughed at me, With their ghastly teeth, in answer! Was never mockery half so dismal! As if it were none of my business. Nor was it; save that I liked grimly to plague them, To taunt them with their barbarity, That they could not so much as dig their own graves, But must needs go break those of the dead race, Their far superiors, and masters in craft and lore! And bury themselves there, just out of sight, Where the vulture's beak could peck them, Were he so obscenely minded,