⁠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!

​⁠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,
From thy unlovely 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 shadowy 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!

Shermantown, Nev., 1869.