I followed once a fleet and mighty serpent Into a cavern in a mountain's side; And, wading many lakes, descending gulphs, At last I reached the ruins of a city, Built not like ours but of another world, As if the aged earth had loved in youth The mightiest city of a perished planet, And kept the image of it in her heart, So dream-like, shadowy, and spectral was it. Nought seemed alive there, and the bony dead Were of another world the skeletons. The mammoth, ribbed like to an arched cathedral, Lay there, and ruins of great creatures else More like a shipwrecked fleet, too great they seemed For all the life that is to animate: And vegetable rocks, tall sculptured palms, Pines grown, not hewn, in stone; and giant ferns, Whose earthquake-shaken leaves bore graves for nests. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE HARD TIMES IN ELFLAND; A STORY OF CHRISTMAS EVE by SIDNEY LANIER ECCE IN DESERTO by HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS |