With glazed and stony eye,
As if strange fear had fixed erewhile
Their gaze on vacancy;
And woe and dread on every brow
In changeless lines were wrought,--
Sad traces of the anguish deep
That filled their latest thought!

They seemed a race of other time,
O'er whom the desert's blast,
For many a long and weary age,
In fiery wrath had passed;
Till, scathed and dry, each wasted form
Its rigid aspect wore,
Unchanged, though centuries had passed
The lonely desert o'er.

Was it the clash of foreign arms--
Was it the invader's tread,--
From which this simple-minded race
In wildest terror fled,--
Choosing, amid the desert-sands,
Scorched by the desert's breath,
Rather than by the invaders' steel,
To meet the stroke of death?

And there they died--a free-born race--
From their proud hills away,
While round them in its lonely pride
The far, free desert lay