his squaw by his side,
And his brood of dusky papposins
Playing about in the twilight
Under the awful star-shadows.

It seemed that I was very close to him, at such times;
And that his thick-ribbed lips,
--Gone to dust for unknown centuries--
Had met mine inscrutably,
By a magic hid in the pipestem,
Making me his familiar and hail fellow.
Almost I felt his breath,
And the muffled sound of his heart-beats;
Almost I grasped his hand,
And shook the antediluvian,
With a shake of grimmest fellowship
Trying to cozen him of his grim secret.
But sudden the gusty wind came,
Laughing away the illusion,
And I was alone in the desert.

If he could only wake up now,
And confront me--that ancient salvage!
Resurgated, with his faculties
All quick about him, and his memories,
What an unheard-of powwow
Could I report to you, O friends of mine!
Who look for some revelation,
Some hint of the strange apocalypse,
Which the wit of this man, living
So near to the prime of the morning,
So near to the gates of the azure,
The awful gates of the Unseen--
Whence all that is seen proceeded--
Hath wrought in this new-found country!
I wonder if he would remember
Anything about the Land of the Immortals.
Something he would surely find
In the deeps of his consciousness
To wake up a dim reminiscence.
Dreamy shadows might haunt him,
Shadows of beautiful faces, and of terrible;
Large, lustrous eyes, full of celestial meanings,
Looking up at him, beseeching him,
From unfathomable abysses,
With glances which were a language.
The finalest secrets and mysteries,
Behind every sight, and sound, and color,
Behind all motions, and harmonies,
Which floated round about him,
Archetypes of the phenomenal!

Or, it might be, that coming suddenly in his mind
Upon some dark veil, as of Isis,
He lifts it with a key-thought,
Or the sudden memory of an arcane sign,
And beholds the gardens of Living Light,
The starry platform, palaces, and thrones--
The vast colossi, the intelligences
Moving to and fro over the flaming causeways
Of the kingdoms beyond the gates--
The infinite arches