ALONG the clouds there spreads a rosy lustre; The horizon's laced with flame; while languidly Night from her neck unlinks the pearly cluster That falls into the sea. The sky dons flaming vesture of dawn's weaving, And folds of shifting splendour swathe the blue; The trailing raiment reddens the sea's heaving With drops of fiery dew. On bamboo-bushes that the light wind threshes, On palms and purple-fruited fronds asway, Dew scatters silver sparks, and dawn refreshes The myriad sounds of day. From moss and flow'r, from hill and woodland spreading, Lulled by the tepid wind there now upwells A wave of air, scent-saturate, down shedding Its fever of sweet smells. By tangled paths beneath the wood's green awning, Where the thick grasses in the sunlight smoke, Where torrents roar down deep-hewn gullies yawning Under the reeds they soak; Behold the panther comes with black limbs shining Back from her midnight hunting to her whelps Where amid bones they huddle close, repining With hunger-goaded yelps. Restless, with wary eyes like arrows probing, She steers among the boughs her furtive way, And on the blackness of her velvet robing Gleam blood-stains of her prey. She drags its mangled remnant, torn asunder From a slain stag, whereon to-night she'll feed, And the frayed haunches of her dreadful plunder Drip blood on moss and weed. Round her the butterflies and wild bees muster, Skimming her supple sinews as they fleet; A myriad bushes where sweet blossoms cluster Throw perfume at her feet. The python from a scarlet cactus peering Unwinds his coil, and with a curious eye Beholds, above the bush his flat head rearing, Her stealthy form go by. She glides beneath tall fern-trees, sinking noiseless Behind mossed boles; the blazing air the while Struck dumb in the vast light above, grows voiceless Beneath the forest aisle. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TYRANNICK [TYRANNIC] LOVE: EPILOGUE by JOHN DRYDEN REBEL MOTHER'S LULLABY by SHANE LESLIE AT THE SEASIDE by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER by JOHANN LUDWIG UHLAND SONNET: 20 by RICHARD BARNFIELD |