Then other mountain men explain, That when one looks upon this sea Of glowing sand, he looks again, Again, through gossamers that run In scintillations of the sun Along this white eternity, And looks until the brain is dazed, Bewilder'd, and the man is crazed. Then one, a grizzled mountaineer, A thin and sinewy old man, With face all wrinkle-wrought, and tan, And presence silent and austere, Does tell a tale, with reaching face And bated breath, of this weird place, Of many a stalwart mountaineer And Piute tall who perish'd here. He tells a tale with whisper'd breath Of skin-clad men who track'd this shore, Once populous with sea-set town, And saw a woman wondrous fair, And, wooing, follow'd her far down Through burning sands to certain death; And then he catches short his breath. He tells: Nay, this is all too long; Enough. The old man shakes his hair When he is done, and shuts his eyes, So satisfied and so self-wise, As if to say, "'Tis nothing rare, This following the luring fair To death, and bound in thorny thong; 'Twas ever thus; the old, old song." XX. Go ye and look upon that land, That far vast land that few behold, And none beholding understand,-- That old, old land which men call new, That land as old as time is old;-- Go journey with the seasons through Its wastes, and learn how limitless, How shoreless lie the distances, Before you come to question this Or dare to dream what grandeur is. The solemn silence of that plain, Where unmanned tempests ride and reign, It awes and it possesses you. 'Tis, oh! so eloquent. The blue And bended skies seem built for it, With rounded roof all fashioned fit, And frescoed clouds, quaint-wrought and true; While all else seems so far, so vain, An idle tale but illy told, Before this land so lone and old. Its story is of God alone, For man has lived and gone away, And left but little heaps of stone, And all seems some long yesterday. Lo! here you learn how more than fit And dignified is silence, when You hear the petty jeers of men Who point, and show their pointless wit. The vastness of that voiceless plain, Its awful solitudes remain Thenceforth for aye a part of you, And you are of the favored few, For you have learn'd your littleness, And heed not names that name you less. Some silent red men cross your track; Some sun-tann'd trappers come and go; Some rolling seas of buffalo Break thunder-like and far away Against the foot-hills, breaking back Like breakers of some troubled bay; But not a voice the long, lone day.