Page:King Solomon's Mines (1907).djvu/208

210 I despair of being able to give an adequate idea of it. Once I heard a scholar with a fine voice read aloud from the Greek poet, and I remember that the sound of the rolling lines seemed to make my blood stand still. Ignosi's chant, uttered as it was in a language as beautiful and sonorous as the old Greek, produced exactly the same effect on me, although I was exhausted with toil and many emotions.

"Now" he began, "now is our rebellion swallowed up in victory and our evil-doing is justified by strength.

"In the morning the oppressors arose and shook themselves; bound on their plumes and made them ready to war.

"They rose up and grasped their spears: the soldiers called to captains, 'Come, lead us'—and the captains cried to the king, 'Direct thou the battle.'

"They arose in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty thousand.

"Their plumes covered the earth as the plumes of a bird cover her nest; they shook their spears and shouted, yea, they hurled their spears into the sunlight; they lusted for the battle and were glad.

"They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me; they cried, 'Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.'

"Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a storm, and lo! they were not.

"My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the lightning of my spears; I shook them to the earth with the thunder of my shouting.

"They broke—they scattered—they were gone as the mists of the morning.

"They are food for the crows and the foxes, and the place of battle is fat with their blood.

"Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning? "Where are the proud ones who tossed their plumes and cried, 'He is as one already dead'?

"They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out but not in sleep.

"They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness, and will not