And, lo! a moaning phantom stands, To greet you in the lonely lands, Among all lesser shadows, dight With spoils of death; his meager hands Salute you as you pass, and claim The sacrifice that feeds his flame. The march has broken into flight, And wreck and ruin strew the road The flaming phantom has bestrode; The ox lies gasping in his yoke Beside the wagon that he drew— Where the forsaken campfires smoke To hopeless skies of tawny blue; And here are straight, still mounds that mark The flight of life’s delusive spark— The somber points of pause that lie So thick in human destiny. And oh, so dark on this bleak page Of drifting sand and dreary sage! The sultry levels of the day, The night with weird enchantment fills, And frowning forests stretch away Along the slopes of shadow hills; And in the solemn stillness breaks The wild-wolf music of the plain, As if a deeper sorrow wakes The dreary dead in that refrain That swells and gathers like a wail Of woe from Pluto’s ebon pale, And sinks in pulseless calm again. A change at last!—an opal mist Along the faint horizon’s rim Is banked against the amethyst Of summer sky—so far, so dim, You shade your eyes, and gaze and gaze, Until there wavers into sight A swinging, swaying strand of white, And then the sapphire walls and towns That breaks the light in quiv’ring showers And float and fade in diamond haze;— It is the mountains!—grand and calm As God upon his awful throne; They build you strength and breathe you balm, For all their templed might of stone Is our eternal sculptured psalm! And now your western course is led Where grassy pampas spread and spread The pastures of the buffalo; And like the sudden lash of foam When tropic tempest smite the sea And masts are stript to ward the blow— A ragged whirl of dust described Upon the prairie’s sloping side Portends a storm as swift and free,— And lo, the herds—they come! they come! A sweeping thunder cloud of life Loud as Niagara, and grand As they who rode with plume and brand On Waterloo’s red slope of strife; Wild as the rush of tidal waves, That roar among the crags and caves, The trampling besom hurls along— A black and bounding, fiery mass