The beautiful Acacia
She sighs in desert lands:
Over the burning waterways
Of Africa she sways and sways,
Even where no air glideth
In cooling green she stands.
The beautiful Acacia
She hath a yellow dress:
A slender trunk of lemon sheen
Gleameth through the tender green
(Where the thorn hideth)
Shielding her loveliness.
The beautiful Acacia
Dwelleth in deadly lands:
Over the brooding waterways
Where death breedeth, she sways and sways,
And no man long abideth
In valleys where she stands.
THE RAIN-BIRD
High on the tufted baobab-tree
To-night a rain-bird sang to me
A simple song, of three notes only,
That made the wilderness more lonely;
For in my brain it echoed nearly,
Old village church bells chiming clearly:
The sweet cracked bells, just out of tune,
Over the mowing grass in June--
Over the mowing grass, and meadows
Where the low sun casts long shadows.
And cuckoos call in the twilight
From elm to elm, in level flight.
Now through the evening meadows move
Slow couples of young folk in love,
Who pause at every crooked stile
And kiss in the hawthorn's shade the while:
Like pale moths the summer frocks
Hover between the beds of phlox,
And old men, feeling it is late,
Cease their gossip at the gate,
Till deeper still the twilight grows,
And night blossometh, like a rose
Full of love and sweet perfume,
Whose heart most tender stars illume.
Here the red sun sank like lead,
And the sky blackened overhead;
Only the locust chirped at me
From the shadowy baobab-tree.
MOTHS
When I lay wakeful yesternight
My fever's flame was a clear light,
A taper, flaring in the wind,
Whither, fluttering out of the dim
Night, many dreams glimmered by.
Like moths, out of the darkness, blind,
Hurling at that taper's flame,
From drinking honey of the night's flowers
Into my circled light they came:
So near I could see their soft colours,
Grey of the dove, most soothely grey;
But my heat singed their wings, and away
Darting into the dark again,
They escaped me....
Others floated down
Like those vaned seeds that fall
In autumn from the sycamore's crown
When no leaf trembleth nor branch is stirred,
More silent in flight than any bird,
Or bat's wings flitting in darkness, soft
As lizards moving on a white wall
They came quietly from aloft
Down through my circle of light, and so
Into unlighted gloom below.
But one dream, strong-winged, daring
Flew beating at the heart of the flame
Till I feared it would have put out my light,
My thin taper, fitfully flaring,
And that I should be left alone in the night
With no more dreams for my delight.
Can it be that from the dead
Even their dreams, their dreams are fled?
BÊTE HUMAINE
Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise,
I saw the world awake; and as the ray
Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day,
Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies,
With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes
Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay.
I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay
Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes...
Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain
And horror, at my own careless cruelty,
That where all things are cruel I had slain
A creature whose sweet life it is to fly:
Like beasts that prey with bloody claw...
Nay, they
Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?
DOVES
On the edge of the wild-wood
Grey doves fluttering:
Grey doves of Astarte
To the woods at daybreak
Lazily uttering
Their murmured enchantment,
Old as man's childhood;
While she, pale divinity
Of hidden evil,
Silvers the regions chaste
Of cold sky, and broodeth
Over forests primeval
And all that thorny waste's
Wooded infinity.
'Lovely goddess of groves,'
Cried I, 'what enchanted
Sinister recesses
Of these lone shades
May still be haunted
By thy demon caresses,
Thy unholy loves?'
But clear day quelleth
Her dominion lonely,
And the soft ring-dove,
Murmuring, telleth
That dark sin only
From man's lust springeth,
In man's heart dwelleth.
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