The “great and golden citie” has to be
Arrived at through a jungle maze, unknown.
Sir Walter Raleigh studied twenty-three
Failed expeditions prior to his own.
Quesada, with a condor’s hungry eyes,
Saw sheets of beaten gold reflect the sun:
Leprous, beneath the desert glare he lies.
And Orellana made his river run
With blanket sails and rigging made of vine:
He lies becalmed amid entangling roots.
While fancy gilds with filigreed designs
These tales that each re-telling convolutes,
I hold of no account what fortune brings;
But venture still to seek imagined things.