STANZAS. 



403 



AVhere Fever, yellow-skinnefl, bony, gaunt, 

 "With the long blue nails and lip livid white ; 



With the blood-stain'd orbs that could ever haunt 

 Our brains hj day and our eyes by night ; 



In her grave-clothes mouldy with graveyard taint 



Came around our sleeping mats — came and went : 



"Where the crocodile glared with malignant stare, 

 And the horse of the river, with watery mane 



That flash' d in the sun, from his oozy lair 



E-ose to gaze on the white and wondrous men ; 



And the lion, with muzzle bent low to earth, 



Mock'd the thunder-cloud with his cruel mirth : 



Wi'.ere the speckled fowls the Mimosa decked 

 Like blue-bells studded with opal dew ; 



And giraff'es, pard-spotted, deer-eyed, swan-necked, 

 Browsed down the base whence the tree-dome grew : 



And the sentinel-antelope, aeried high, 



With his frighten'd bound taught his friends to fly : 



Where the lovely Coast is all rank with death, 

 That basks in the sun of the Zingian shore ; 



Where the mountains, dank with the ocean's breath, 

 Bear the incense-tree and the sycamore ; 



Where the grim fierce desert and stony hill 



Breed the fiercest beasts, and men fiercer still : 



Where the land of the Moon, with all blessings blest 

 Save one: — save man — and with name that sped 



To the farthest edge of the misty West 



Since the Tyrian sailor his sail-sheet spread, 



Loves to gaze on her planet whose loving ray 



Fills her dells and fells with a rival day : 



Where the Lake unnamed in the Afric wold 

 Its breast to the stranger eye lay bare ; 



Where Isis, forced her veil to unfold — 



To forget the boast of t!ie days that were — 



