I’m sure if one could probe
But deep enough, he’d find this globe
Just tunneled through with catacombs
And resonant with hollow domes
And yawning gulfs, abysmal spaces
And divers dark, unfathomed places
Where echoes die through mere excess
Of nothingness.
There’s mystery in holes—a solid thing
Is never half so interesting;
It’s fun to poke around in them—to draw the screen
Away from things long hidden and unseen,
Like those in Josephine.
Ten miles of thickest Douglas green
The little trail winds through,
That leads you to
Old Gray Back with his half-closed,
Crooked eye. How long he’s dosed
That way—without a blink,
Who knows? Until Elijah found the chink
That day he shot the bear—
Just crippled her enough to tear
Down through the rocks—a bloody track
Into the big, black crack;
And that was back
Along there in the seventies.
Dick Rawly tells the story—he’s
The guide,
And how he beams with pride
To see outsiders rave
About the marvels of his cave,
As proud of every chamber, niche and shelf
As if he’d chiseled it himself.
And Lord! The more you snoop
Around down there, and scrape and stoop
To see the things you see,
The more you think he has a right to be.
Dick’s different too—he says his say
As if he’d learned it yesterday
Instead of when he did.
With all the ardor of a kid
He rambles on—it’s always new
To him, just as it is to you.
He tells you how the place was formed
In glacial days, when waters stormed
And roared and cut their channels through
The very spot where you
Stand marveling. Then comes the change.
The glaciers pass, along the range
They ride no more, the streams are dried,
The conflict stops. On every side
Lime-laden drops begin
To percolate and filter in—
The long, cold sweat appears.
For several hundred thousand years,
Away from light, away from time,
Those little drops have oozed their lime.
Relentless patience must have played
Its part when all this underworld was made,
And infinite variety took hand
When it was planned—
Or was it planned? Was it intent—
Or some sublimely perfect accident
That caused to be
That marble-fluted canopy
Above the many-pillowed throne
That’s shown
In brilliant, bold relief against our light
In this Lost Paradise of night.
And see—
Upflocking toward the canopy,
A-scurrying,
Those baffling forms that cling
And swarms of pudgy shapes that ride
In half-lights, side by side.
And was it chance that made
The Coral Garden’s gray arcade
And pillared it and set in place
Each tiny statuette and grotesque face;
And petrified the water-falls;
And hung the walls
And roofs of all the halls
With rows of frescoes—pendant, bright,
And gleaming like a starry night;
And made the sweetest chimes to ring—
We heard their clear notes echoing.
If it was chance, I didn’t find
It so. To me it seemed a master-mind
Was lurking there—some spirit born of endless night,
Transfusing each slow-dropping mite
Into a wonder-thing
By deft, fantastic fashioning.
Dick said
The place was uninhabited,
Except for a few bats
At times and some pack-rats
That nested near the mouth—but how could he
Tell what _had_ been? To me
The place was just _deserted_—that was all!
Because we heard no laughter fall,
Nor voices ring,
Proved not a thing.
And when
The first intrusion came of mortal men,
There must have been a merry muss
And universal exodus
Down through those dark recesses there
And on to undiscovered regions where
No man may hope to go.
I would have witnessed such a show!
Those trooping little refugees
Of divers personalities
In babbling groups, by twos and threes,
With all their household goods—they must have moved
Them all—the fact is proved
Conclusively, as there’s no trace
Of such effects in any place.
Perhaps the Pix went first—
They’re fearsome, so I’ve heard, and cursed
With nerves. And then the Nixie crew,
The Pix’s shapely cousins who
Are beautiful—as Nixies go,
And no less slow
To move when trouble stirs the air.
Now comes a flare
Of lurid light—the rhythmic tramps
Of Gwelfs who bear their swinging lamps
Of cocobol;
A roll
Of music like bassoons—
The beating wings of Dragleloons,
Their patterned pinions show their sheen
And glow with iridescent green—
Out trails the light—a glint of scales
Gives hint of flashing, rainbow tails.
Now Master Goblin falls in line,
The chills are jumping in his spine,
His eyeballs bulge with speechless fear,
His mouth’s a slit from ear to ear.
He goes galumping in his boots;
Behind him thump the Dormizoots,
And then the Elves.
From all the crannies, nooks and shelves
The Wiffles come, and scrambling Wools,
And Blurbs and jibbering Gabools—
They stumble, tumble—now they run,
Each fumbles for the other one,
Mate calls for mate—
A seething flux conglomerate
Of cave-born entities.
They pant and grunt and squeak and wheeze,
They stampede, yell,
And chase pell-mell.
Through tortuous tunnels walled with light
The pigmy pageant makes its flight,
The last far turn is made,
The swinging flicker-flashes fade,
The clamor and the cries
Are dimmed—the babbling tumult dies.
The palace rooms are dark, the halls of state,
The Coral Gardens—all are desolate.
No music falls—
The conclaves and the carnivals,
The mystic rites,
The colors bathed in mellow lights,
The throbbing life and mirth
Of all this chambered, nether-earth
Are gone. Nor will one Elf return
To ring the crystal chimes or burn
Strange incense at the pillowed throne,
Because no Elf was ever known
To tread again where mortal man
Has been—nor any of the hybrid clan
Who must have scampered out of there
That day Elijah shot the bear.