rrows cleave
By sun and frost and cloud-burst; scarce to leave
Perceptible a trace
Of age or sorrow;
Faint hints of yesterdays with no to-morrow;--
My mind regards thee with a questioning eye,
To know thy secret, high.

If Theban mystery,
With head of woman, soaring, bird-like wings
And serpent's tail on lion's trunk, were things
Puzzling in history;
And men invented
For it an origin which represented
Chimera and a monster double-headed,
By myths Phenician wedded--

Their issue being this--
This most chimerical and wonderous thing
From whose dumb mouth not even the gods could wring
Truth, nor antithesis:
Then, what I think is,
This creature--being chief among men's sphinxes--
Is eloquent, and overflows with story,
Beside thy silence hoary!

Nevada!--desert waste!
Mighty, and inhospitable, and stern;
Hiding a meaning over which we yearn
In eager, panting haste--
Grasping and losing,
Still being deluded ever by our choosing--
Answer us Sphinx: What is thy meaning double
But endless toil and trouble?

Inscrutable, men strive
To rend thy secret from thy rocky breast;
Breaking their hearts, and periling heaven's rest
For hopes that cannot thrive;
Whilst unrelenting,
Upon thy mountain throne, and unrepenting,
Thou sittest, basking in a fervid sun,
Seeing or hearing none.

I sit beneath thy stars,
The shallop moon beached on a bank of clouds--;
And see thy mountains wrapped in shadowed shrouds,
Glad that the darkness bars
The day's suggestion--
The endless repetition of one question;
Glad that thy stony face I cannot see,
Nevada--Mystery!

THE VINE.

"Too many clusters weaken the vine"--
And that is why, on this morn in May,
She who should walk doth weakly recline
By the window whose view overlooks the Bay;
While I and the "clusters" dance in the sun,
Defying the breeze coming in from the sea,
Mocking the bird-song and chasing the bee,
Letting our fullness of mirth over-run,
While the "Vine" at the window smiles down on our glee.

If I should vow that these "clusters" are fair,
So, you would say, are a million more;