The Desert

That silence which enfolds the Great Beyond Broods in these spaces where the yucca palms Like gray old votaries chant unworded psalms, Grand, voiceless harmonies where-to the Heavens respond.

Lone, vast, eternal as Eternity, The brown wastes crawl to clutch the wrinkled hills,-- Till night lets down her solemn dusk and fills The waiting void with haunting mystery.

Here Solitude hath made her dwelling place, As when of old amid untrodden sands, Slow-journeying, wise men of all alien lands Sought at her feet life’s hidden roads to trace.

All ways of earth, still glad or sad they go, The roads of life--till breath of man shall cease-- Silent, the desert keeps her ancient peace, And that last secret which the dead may know.