An Artist's Rapture and Despair I stood upon the rim of some strange world -- Vague, silent, mystical -- its depths unfurled In splendid, sloping terraces, mist-hung, And wondrous in the shifing colors flung Like draperies of gauze 'twixt space and sun, A sleeping silver snake, seen from the heights, The far-off river rushing to its doom. From startling depths a city rose to view, Builded in ages when the earth was new -- Vast hanging gardens, gay in mineral bloom, Enchanted castles, silent as the tomb; Domes, towers and ramparts, bathed in violet lights, And tints -- an artist's rapture and despair Ten million sunsets must have shattered there. -- Henry Cleveland Wood, in Four Track News. -- from The Grand Canyon of Arizona -- copyright 1909 by W.J. Black -- published by the Passenger Department of the Santa Fe railroad