Page:Poems by Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/88

 NEVADA.

Sphinx, down whose rugged face

The sliding centuries their furrows cleave

By sun, and frost, and cloudburst, scarce to leave

Perceptible a trace

Of age or sorrow;

Faint hints of yesterdays with no tomorrow;—

My mind regards thee with a questioning eye,

To know thy secret, high.

If Theban mystery,

With head of woman, soaring, birdlike 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 wondrous thing,

From whose dumb mouth not even the gods could wring

Truth, nor anthithesis:

Then what I think is,

This creature—being chief among men's sphinxes—

Is eloquent, and overflows with story,

Beside thy silence hoary!

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