Trails Sunward/Mountains in the Grand Canyon

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4517009Trails Sunward — Mountains in the Grand CanyonCale Young Rice

MOUNTAINS IN THE GRAND CANYON

Each a primeval vastness, shaped by hands
Whose cosmic strength carved idly then forgot,
In half-created awfulness here stands,
For sun and wind and cloud and rain to rot.
No chaos do they seem, but as the work
Of a lone God, or one to purpose blind—
Who could not his creative urgence shirk,
Yet without love or hope has wrought his mind.

And man was not, when first their mythic shapes
Emerged phantasmal in the Great Gulf's terror;
Nor shall man be when the last silence drapes
Their desolation's drear and deathless error.
For supra-human, supra-mundane, sunk
In dread indifference, they heedless sit—
Abortive rock from whence all soul has shrunk,
Abandoned quarry of The Infinite.