Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/58

36 Nevermore! wails the burden of the strain, Burdening, as it seems, the very sleep Of a serene, fair incense-breathing earth! Ever it wails, low, dreary, and desolate, Oppress'd and muffled in a solemn sorrow; A dirge world-weary, an old-world requiem, Trailing a slow wan length along the dust, Faint from the fount of immemorial tears; A shadow, whose maim'd wings are plumed with awe; Sunken so deep from ghostly woes and fears, And broken hearts of all ancestral lives; Phantoms aroused by a fresh living pain To haunt the labyrinths of a living soul, And all the dark slow movement of the dirge!

One cabin stands a little way apart From all the rest upon a higher ground. Hence flows the wail! A man laments his son. It is an aged warrior of the tribe, Who cowers, and sways himself upon the floor, Before an ember glow, that he beholds