Herman Melville

“ By something which has life, you feel:
And yet, the shades but death reveal;
For under cobwebbed cactus trees,
White by their trunks--what hulks be these ⁠55
Which, like old skulls of Anaks, are
Set round as in a Golgotha?
But, list,--a sound! Dull, dull it booms--
Dull as the jar in vaulted tombs
When urns are shifted. ”

“ For meat the bitter tree is all--
The cactus, whose nipped fruit is shed
On those bleached skull-like hulks below,
Which, when by life inhabited, ⁠85
Crept hither in last journey slow
After a hundred years of pain
And pilgrimage here to and fro,
For other hundred years to reign
In hollow of white armor so-- ⁠90
Then perish piecemeal. You advance:
Instant, more rapid than a glance,
Long neck and four legs are drawn in,
Letting the shell down with report
Upon the stone ”