In The Desert

I met the night in unfamiliar lands, In realmless desolations, drear and far, Where no life was, nor any shard remained Of tomb or cenotaph: all salient things Long since had fed the prone monotony Of the null forgetful sands. Here darkness carne Directly as a king who mounts the throne Of some Cimmerian primogeniture. A waif of day, I wandered beneath stars That seemed the unnumbered steely eyes of Death Seeking the lost necropoles. A wind Rose loudly on the middle night, and passed, Laden with nameless, immemorial dust, The shapeless ghost of empires. In that dark Alien and secret as the heart of death, I knew not if the wind, remembering Walls that were great upon its ancient way, Sang now their threnody, or if the dust, Tongueless itself, found in the shrilling wind A tongue for its regret. I, wandering there, Felt but the dust's unseen, mysterious kiss, Heard but the grievous wind. . . . So have I known Lost visions vaguely grasp at memory And fall back unrecalled. . . . Then, laden still With sorrow and with dustiness of Eld, Stirring the desert dark, the wind went on To leave its dwindling burden at the feet Of splendid morning unendurable.