Forward! The crackling lashes send
A thrill of action down the train,
Their brawny necks the oxen bend
With creaking yoke and clanking chain;
The horsemen gallop down the line,
And swerve around the lowing kine
That straggle loosely on the plain …

And now the sun is dropping down,
The light and shadows, red and brown,
Are weaving sunset's purple spell:
The teams are freed, the fires are made,
Like scarlet night-flow'rs in the shade,
And pleasant groups before, between,
Are thronging in the fitful sheen—
The day is done and all is well …

A hundred nights, a hundred days;
Nor folded cloud nor silken haze
Mellow the sun's midsummer blaze.
Along the brown and barren plain
In silence drags the wasted train;

The dust starts up beneath your tread,
Like angry ashes of the dead,
To blind you with a choking cloud
And wrap you in a yellow shroud …
Alas, it is a lonesome land
Of bitter sage and barren sand,
Under a bitter, barren sky
That never heard the robin sing,
Nor kissed the lark's exultant wing,
Nor breathed the rose's fragrant sigh!

A weary land—alas! alas!
The shadows of the vultures pass—
A spectral sign across your path;
The gaunt, gray wolf, with head askance,
Throws back at you a scowling glance
Of cringing hate and coward wrath,
And like a wraith accursed and banned
Fades out before your lifted hand.

A dim, sad land, forgot, forsworn,
By all bright life that may not mourn,
And crazed with glistening ghost of seas …
Only to taunt the thirst and fly
From withered lip and lurid eye …

The sun is weary overhead,
And pallid deserts round you spread
A sorrowful eternity …
And so the dust and grit and stain
Of travel wears into the grain,
And so the hearts and souls of men
Were darkly tried and tested then,
So that in happy after years,
When rainbows gild remembered tears,
Should any friend enquire of you
If such or such an one you knew—
I hear the answer, terse and grim,
“Ah, yes, I crossed the plains with him!”