Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/114

Alas! how changed!
. . Bowery villages roll volumed clouds
Of fiery smoke, staining the limpid light;
Rich harvests, charr'd, or trampled, or ungarner'd
Idly luxuriant, meet the mournful eye.
While, even beside a fair golden array
Of bounteous corn, a few starved boys and women,
Gaunt as yon skeletons around them strewn,
Crawl; listless, hopeless famine in their eyes;
All that were dear, slain, tortured, or expell'd
By arm'd assaults of the fierce slave-driver.
And ah! these skeletons! the tales they tell!
Beside fair river-banks, beside wreck'd huts,
Under green trees, under red rocks, in caves,
Ghastly anatomies, in attitudes
Of mortal anguish, writhed, and curl'd, and twisted,
Mutually clasp'd in transports of despair!

⁠In one closed cabin, when mine eyes conform
To its faint twilight, on a rude raised bed
Appear two skeletons in mouldering weeds;