At last he was resolved, his form Seem'd like a pine blown rampt with storm. He mounted, clutch'd his reins, and then Turn'd sharp and savage to his men; And silent then led down the way To night that knows not night nor day. XXII. Like some great serpent black and still, Old Morgan's men stole down the hill. Far down the steep they wound and wound Until the black line touched that land Of gleaming white and silver sand That knows not human sight or sound. How broken plunged the steep descent; How barren! Desolate, and rent By earthquake's shock, the land lay dead, With dust and ashes on its head. 'Twas as some old world overthrown, Where Theseus fought and Sappho dreamed In eons ere they touched this land, And found their proud souls foot and hand Bound to the flesh and stung with pain. An ugly skeleton it seem'd Of its own self. The fiery rain Of red volcanoes here had sown The death of cities of the plain. The very devastation gleamed. All burnt and black, and rent and seam'd, Ay, vanquished quite and overthrown, And torn with thunder-stroke, and strown With cinders, lo! the dead earth lay As waiting for the judgment day. Why, tamer men had turn'd and said, On seeing this, with start and dread, And whisper'd each with gather'd breath, "We come on the confines of death." They wound below a savage bluff That lifted, from its sea-mark'd base, Great walls with characters cut rough And deep by some long-perish'd race; And lo! strange beasts unnamed, unknown, Stood hewn and limn'd upon the stone. The iron hoofs sank here and there, Plough'd deep in ashes, broke anew Old broken idols, and laid bare Old bits of vessels that had grown, As countless ages cycled through, Imbedded with the common stone. A mournful land as land can be Beneath their feet in ashes lay, Beside that dread and dried-up sea; A city older than that gray And grass-grown tower builded when Confusion cursed the tongues of men. Beneath, before, a city lay That in her majesty had shamed The wolf-nursed conqueror of old; Below, before, and far away There reach'd the white arm of a bay, A broad bay shrunk to sand and stone, Where ships had rode and breakers roll'd When Babylon was yet unnamed, And Nimrod's hunting-fields unknown. Some serpents slid from out the grass That grew in tufts by shatter'd stone, Then hid beneath some broken mass That Time had eaten as a bone Is eaten by some savage beast; An everlasting palace feast.