No couches of the nymph and Bassarid,
Or thymy meadows such as Simois glasses,
Lured his exulting feet, my jocund kid,
But veldt and kloof and waving jungle grasses,
Where lurk the python with unwinking lid,
And the lean lion, growling, as he passes,
His futile wrath against the hoarse baboons
That drape the rocks in chattering platoons.
Free of the waste he snuffed the breeze at morn,
The fleet-foot peer of sassaby and kudu;