The Quarry

Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea             I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.             Upon his back a huge pagoda towered             Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.             Upon his forehead sat a golden throne,             The massy metal twisted into shapes             Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move             In myth or have their broken images             Sealed in the stony middle of the hills.             A peacock spread his thousand dyes to screen             The yellow sunlight from the head of one             Who sat upon the throne, clad stiff with gems,             Heirlooms of dynasties of buried kings,--             Himself the likeness of a buried king,             With frozen gesture and unfocused eyes.             The trappings of the beast were over-scrawled             With broideries--sea-shapes and flying things,             Fan-trees and dwarfed nodosities of pine,             Mixed with old alphabets, and faded lore             Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood,             Or gathered by the daughters when they walked             Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God             Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous.             Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead;             Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow             His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road;             And feebler than the doting knees of eld,             His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane             Across the war-walls of the Anakim,             Made vain and shaken haste. Good need was his             To hasten: panting, foaming, on the slot             Came many brutes of prey, their several hates             Laid by until the sharing of the spoil.             Just as they gathered stomach for the leap,             The sun was darkened, and wide-balanced wings             Beat downward on the trade-wind from the sea.             A wheel of shadow sped along the fields             And o'er the dreaming cities. Suddenly             My heart misgave me, and I cried aloud,             "Alas! What dost thou here? What dost _thou_ here?"             The great beasts and the little halted sharp,             Eyed the grand circler, doubting his intent.             Straightway the wind flawed and he came about,             Stooping to take the vanward of the pack;             Then turned, between the chasers and the chased,             Crying a word I could not understand,--             But stiller-tongued, with eyes somewhat askance,             They settled to the slot and disappeared.                 1900.