Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/98

76 Clouded with saffron or cerulean flowers, And little silken blossoms of pure snow, Dying in dews of every dying eve, Living in all revivals of the morn. Here women singing reap the golden grain, Or bind in sheaves; here flourish cotton-fleece, Rice, tendrill'd peas, and pulse, and sugar-cane; While mottled kine, knee-deep in flowering grasses, At milking time low to their prison'd heifers, And merry kidlings frisk at bower'd doors. The men under some fig's rich canopy Sit weaving limber baskets, or a weir, And fishing-creel. Slight palisades preserve Dark jasper-jewell'd women, as they fill Their pitchers in the river, from the foul Scaled alligators that abound below, Watchfully lurking underneath wan water; Dim treacherous shadows, motionless like stone, Monsters who linger from primæval time, Ere man appear'd to rule—