Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE LEOPARD, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LEOPARD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In lands where only jackals call
Last Line: The jackal's call!
Subject(s): Desert Animals; Deserts; Food & Eating; Imagination; Fancy


IN lands where only jackals call,
And only vulture-shadows fall
Day-long, beside a city wall,
Did this betide.
'Twas night; the sands were camel-strewn;
Around me was a world unknown;
Far off the drifted desert blown,
A bugle died.

I felt dim shapes of thought arise,
Which turn to stone the human eyes
That long have gazed on desert skies,
Far from mankind;
Grim mammoth things that come unbid,
In the great pit of being hid,
Kin to the Sphinx and Pyramid,
Unhinged my mind.

Grotesque enchantments that begin
In motions of the twisted drin,
Wound in my senses, and within
My spirit stirred;
The desert magic o'er me drew
Cast skins of nature she outgrew,
Worn in the time she man foreknew
In beast and bird.

I seemed a creature strange, apart,
Crept from a crevice of the heart
Of things, -- to come and to depart, --
A foot, a face;
There, peering in my hour of light
Upon the centuries' ageless flight,
I held the whole world on my sight, --
All time, all space.

One moment, robed in starry air,
As 'twere a spangled leopard there,
I crouched, -- and slipped back unaware
Into all things;
As when the phoenix melts in flame,
The soul of matter went and came,
And in one throb great nature's frame
Folded its wings.

How dark it was, when I came back
Along the spiritual track
To my own world! how mortal black
The city wall, --
The forms of men like shadows seen,
Sleeping the camel-heaps between,
Unconscious of the spectral scene,
The jackal's call!





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