Explore "Dead Cities" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Out of it all but this remains: -- / I was with one who crossed wide chains / Of the Cordilleras, whose peaks / Lock in the wilds of Yucatan, / Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks -- / And then a city that no man / Had ever seen; so dim and old, / No chronicle has ever told / The history of men who piled / Its temples and huge teocallis / Among mimosa-blooming valleys; / Or how its altars were defiled / With human blood; whose idols there / With eyes of stone still stand and stare.
/ So old the moon can only know / How old, since ancient forests grow / On mighty wall and pyramid. / Huge ceibas, whose trunks were scarred / With ages, and dense yuccas, hid / Fanes 'mid the cacti, scarlet-starred. / I looked upon its paven ways, / And saw it in its kingliest days; / When from the lordly palace one, / A victim, walked with prince and priest, / Who turned brown faces toward the east / In worship of the rising sun: / At night ten hundred temples' spires / On gold burnt everlasting fires.