As stags that o'er some moonlit pasture range, Obscurely they emerge upon our ken, Those lithe fierce forms, pathetical and strange, Those changeless savage men! Sometimes it is the prairies' twilight brood That, for a moment, doth affront our noon: The stark Ghost-dancers rave for white men's blood, Their bare feet drum in tune. Sometimes, with unimagined faith possest, The dark religious Mahdists rush in swarms Upon an impious and intruding West, Impregnable in arms. Anon, the meek Kamáka steals in view, And respite for a little space implores, While drink, disease, and long debauch undo His palm-embattled shores. Again, with praying lips and patient eyes, Some Aethiop tribe uplifts a sombre face, And pleads articulate before it dies For the great White Man's grace. Commerce, the sluggish-footed Maenad, creeps Through all their borders, laying stealthy hands Upon the harvest of all virgin deeps, The fruit of all lone lands! She leaves a bleaching line of savage bones Her royal road to mark and to define: Cairns of their murdered kings are her milestones, Kings of some perishing line. Vainly these strove and cried, nor ever found A breathing-space, a time to love and toil, A strip of hunting-ground or burial-ground No trader dared despoil! Types of the ancestral races whence have sprung The polished Aryans of the happier West, Types of the Babe who hung when Time was young Upon Earth's lonely breast, Shall these belated elemental men Still inarticulately strive and cry, And find no rest until the day dawn when Mortality shall die? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LITTLE BOY LOST, FR. SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE FETES GALANTES: MANDOLINE by PAUL VERLAINE DRINKING SONG (3) by ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE SAY NO MORE OF ME by ANNA EMILIA BAGSTAD THE INDIAN SUMMER by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD A BAGATELLE by JAMES G. BURNETT PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY: INTRODUCTORY by CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY |