THE DEPARTURE FROM THE FOREST.
Where the light laughs in through the tree-tops
And sports with the tangled glade,
In the depths of an Afric forest
My earliest scenes were laid.
In a bower that was merry with smilax
From the grimace of no-where, I woke
I was born on the first day of April
And they called me a jungle joke.
And the voices of birds were about me—
And the beat and the flutter of wing;
While morning returned at the trumpet
Of Tusky, our elephant king.
My nurse was a crooning old beldame
Who gazed in the palms of my hands
And vowed I was destined to travel
In many and marvellous lands.
But little I heeded her croaking,
For I gamboled the whole day long,
And swung by my tail from the tree-top,
Or joined in the jungle song.
