A dull-eyed rattlesnake that lay All loathsome, yellow-skinn'd, and slept, Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun, With flat head through the centre run, Struck blindly back, then rattling crept Flat-bellied down the dusty way ... 'Twas all the dead land had to say. Two pink-eyed hawks, wide-wing'd and gray, Scream'd savagely, and, circling high, And screaming still in mad dismay, Grew dim and died against the sky ... 'Twas all the heavens had to say. The grasses fail'd, and then a mass Of brown, burnt cactus ruled the land, And topt the hillocks of hot sand, Where scarce the hornèd toad could pass. Then stunted sage on either hand, All loud with odors, spread the land. The sun rose right above, and fell As falling molten as they pass'd. Some low-built junipers at last, The last that o'er the desert look'd, Thick-bough'd, and black as shapes of hell Where dumb owls sat with bent bills hook'd Beneath their wings awaiting night, Rose up, then faded from the sight: Then not another living thing Crept on the sand or kept the wing. White Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! Vast sepulchre of buried sea! What dim ghosts hover on thy rim, What stately-manner'd shadows swim Along thy gleaming waste of sands And shoreless limits of dead lands? Dread Azteckee! Dead Azteckee! White place of ghosts, give up thy dead: Give back to Time thy buried hosts! The new world's tawny Ishmaelite, The roving tent-born Shoshonee, Who shuns thy shores as death, at night, Because thou art so white, so dread, Because thou art so ghostly white, Because thou hast thy buried hosts, Has named thy shores "the place of ghosts." Thy white uncertain sands are white With bones of thy unburied dead That will not perish from the sight. They drown but perish not,--ah me! What dread unsightly sights are spread Along this lonesome dried-up sea. White Azteckee, give up to me Of all thy prison'd dead but one, That now lies bleaching in the sun, To tell what strange allurements lie Within this dried-up oldest sea, To tempt men to its heart and die. Old, hoar, and dried-up sea! so old! So strewn with wealth, so sown with gold! Yea, thou art old and hoary white With time, and ruin of all things; And on thy lonesome borders night Sits brooding as with wounded wings. The winds that toss'd thy waves and blew Across thy breast the blowing sail, And cheer'd the hearts of cheering crew From farther seas, no more prevail. Thy white-wall'd cities all lie prone, With but a pyramid, a stone, Set head and foot in sands to tell The tired stranger where they fell.