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By Veldt and Kopje. W. C. Scully
Читать онлайн.Название By Veldt and Kopje
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isbn 4064066237394
Автор произведения W. C. Scully
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
W. C. Scully
By Veldt and Kopje
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066237394
Table of Contents
Prologue.
VOICES OF AFRICA
AFRICA
Sphinx among continents—the Nations strive
To guess my ancient riddle; Greece essayed—
She drooped to death; upon me Rome set gyve—
She sank in her own bonds. The Persian laid
His life down ’mid my deserts. For a day
I smiled on each, then tore them for my play.
THE SAHARA
The ghosts of buried cities scale the air
When Day wakes my mirage. The lion keeps
My iron hills. The bones of men lie bare
Where my thirst-sickle its rich harvest reaps.
Time, like a little child, amid my sands
Builds and unbuilds with feeble, listless hands.
EGYPT
The gods who dwell ’mid equatorial snows
Bade Nilus cleave the waste, and I awoke.
A giant, robed in mystery, I arose;
The young world listened, breathless, when I spoke.
My Sphinx Time’s sister is; her brood lies hid
Where dream the dead ’neath rock and pyramid.
CARTHAGE
Sidon sent forth her sons, her sons sent Tyre;
The Desert’s daughters bore a mighty race.
The God whose brazen hands sloped to the fire
Reared o’er me the red terror of his face.
Rome, vengeful, trod me to the dust, and strowed
With salt the site where once my powers abode.
ALEXANDRIA
The godlike Alexander wav’d his sword;
Beneath its spell rose palace, mart and school,
No gold so precious as my lightest word;
My logos still the Faith of Man doth rule.
Greek, Roman and Barbarian, East and West,
Drank lore like milk from my most bounteous breast.
MOUNT ATLAS
Time haled the great Globe from my aching back
And hung it ’mid the stars. Content I rest,
The ocean’s murmured music at my feet,
The foldless flocks of cloudland round my crest.
Pan walks with Faunus through my dreaming woods,
And Dryads pace my leafy solitudes.
RUWENZORI
A diadem of changeless snow lies light
Upon my regal head; my locks I shake,
And, straightway, living waters take their flight.
The iron bonds of Ancient Drought to break.
A virgin, new-unveiled, I stand alone;
Aeons will pass, but none unclasp my zone.
THE LAKES
Hand seeking hand, a peerless sisterhood,
We watched for dawn through dark of murd’rous years
Our sky-pure fringes mired with human blood,
Our rain-sweet wavelets salt with human tears.
Our tideless glasses gleam resplendently
High o’er the rockings of the restless sea.
THE CONGO
Through jungles spawned from fever-drunken sod
Where, sleeplessly, the foul man-hunters hide.
The bitter lees from God’s dread wine-press trod
By desperate feet, drain down my tepid tide.
Leviathan there wallows in his wrath;
There range the hordes of mighty Behemoth.
THE ZAMBEZI
The spoils the sky had of the world-wide main
I bear, new-gathered from ten thousand rills
To where the thund’rous gates my steps enchain,
Clogged with the wastage of a million hills.
Thence, breaking forth in triumph, full and free,
I render back my booty to the sea.
ZIMBABWE
I housed the brood of Carthage; they the earth
Deep rifled for its treasure. On me fell