Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/49

In branching wildernesses of rich gloom,
In beast, and bird, and every living thing;
Yea, noble thoughts and deeds and souls for ever
Live in the deep eternal heart of God:
They are reverberate in the lives of all;
Nor fail of full fruition and reward.⁵

⁠Or shall I light on some barbarian
Court, where high lords, like reptiles in the dust,
Grovel before a swarthy emperor,
Throned all in gold? who—from the burning day
Shielded beneath a slave-supported silk
Pavilion crown'd with some griffonian beast,
That courts the sunlight—clothed in musky fur
Of tawny spotted pard, cruel as he,
And fig-bark beaten; wrists with ivory bound,
And slung with genets' tails; a scimitar
In his right hand; red plumes of touraco⁶
Among his oil'd elaborated curls—
Glowers where the panther-supple guards advance,
Gory, dusk, jewell'd stalwart Amazons,
At his feet rolling four distorted heads.