Page:A Treasury of South African Poetry.djvu/189

 Where the grim satyr-faced baboon Sits gibbering on the rising moon, Or chides with hoarse and angry cry The herdsman as he wanders by.

Spread out below in sun and shade, The shaggy glen lies full displayed— Its sheltered nooks, its sylvan bowers, Its meadows flushed with purple flowers; And through it like a dragon spread, I trace the river's tortuous bed. Lo! there the Chaldee-willow weeps Drooping o'er the headlong steeps, Where the torrent in his wrath Hath rifted him a rugged path, Like fissure cleft by earthquake's shock, Through mead and jungle, mound and rock. But the swollen water's wasteful sway, Like tyrant's rage hath passed away, And left the ravage of its course Memorial of its frantic force.— Now o'er its shrunk and slimy bed Rank weeds and withered wrack are spread, With the faint rill just oozing through, And vanishing again from view; Save where the guana's glassy pool Holds to some cliff its mirror cool, Girt by the palmite's leafy screen, Or graceful rock-ash, tall and green, Whose slender sprays above the flood Suspend the loxia's callow brood In cradle-nests, with porch below, Secure from winged or creeping foe—