The New Penelope/Nevada
NEVADA.
Sphinx, down whose rugged face
The sliding centuries their furrows 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!