Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/21

 Oh! forest world, thou gorgeous affluence

Of beauty, grandeur, magic, horror, wonder,

Infinite treasures of form and sense,

Light, color, shadow, scent and sound, as under

Day’s glowing kiss awoke to consciousness

How passing fair! how clothe them in its sheen,

Haughty, the veterans of thy wilderness,

Waving their tropic wealth of glowing green,

Flashing in emerald waves, a sea of splendour.

But to the lower cycles of the grove

Day from its crowned monarchs deigns to rove

Down to where yet a second forest tenders

(Being but itself those giants’ undergrowth,)

Shelter to thickets lower yet and blending

Leaves great and small in wealth of forms unending,

Fantastic groups you here may see of both

Plumes and enormous fans which all around

Spread from the palms’ slim crowns a feather frond

Massed into stately vault or ribbed network,

Here emerald blades, here fringe of fairy fretwork;

And amid all those feather-forms unending

Sportively night here battles with the daylight,

’Mid a myriad shadows, exquisitely blending,

Till, lower chased, she walks the dusky grey light,

Free and unchallenged, in perpetual shades

Where through her poisoned weeds entangled waste

Slime and morass and serpent root enlaced

No glance of curious day her gloom invades.

But up above light strings a hundred bows

And iris sparks. There, spreading in a rose