* * * * *

Then breaks fierce Day!  The whirling dust is driven
O’er earth and heaven, until the sun-scorched plain
Its road scarce shows for dazzling heat to those
Who, far from home and love, journey in pain,
Longing to rest again.

Panting and parched, with muzzles dry and burning,
For cool streams yearning, herds of antelope
Haste where the brassy sky, banked black and high,
Hath clouded promise.  “There will be”—­they hope—­
“Water beyond the tope!”

Sick with the glare, his hooded terrors failing,
His slow coils trailing o’er the fiery dust,
The cobra glides to nighest shade, and hides
His head beneath the peacock’s train:  he must
His ancient foeman trust!

The purple peafowl, wholly overmastered
By the red morning, droop with weary cries;
No stroke they make to slay that gliding snake
Who creeps for shelter underneath the eyes
Of their spread jewelries!

The jungle lord, the kingly tiger, prowling,
For fierce thirst howling, orbs a-stare and red,
Sees without heed the elephants pass by him,
Lolls his lank tongue, and hangs his bloody head,
His mighty forces fled.

Nor heed the elephants that tiger, plucking
Green leaves, and sucking with a dry trunk dew;
Tormented by the blazing day, they wander,
And, nowhere finding water, still renew
Their search—­a woful crew!

With restless snout rooting the dark morasses,
Where reeds and grasses on the soft slime grow,
The wild-boars, grunting ill-content and anger,
Dig lairs to shield them from the torturing glow,
Deep, deep as they can go.

The frog, for misery of his pool departing—­
’Neath that flame-darting ball—­and waters drained
Down to their mud, crawls croaking forth, to cower
Under the black-snake’s coils, where there is gained
A little shade; and, strained

To patience by such heat, scorching the jewel
Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head,
That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along,
Licks it for coolness—­all discomfited—­
Strikes not his strange friend dead!

The pool, with tender-growing cups of lotus
Once brightly blowing, hath no blossoms more! 
Its fish are dead, its fearful cranes are fled,
And crowding elephants its flowery shore
Tramp to a miry floor.

With foam-strings roping from his jowls, and dropping
From dried drawn lips, horns laid aback, and eyes
Mad with the drouth, and thirst-tormented mouth,
Down-thundering from his mountain cavern flies
The bison in wild wise,

Questing a water channel.  Bare and scrannel
The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row
With beaks agape.  The hot baboon and ape
Climb chattering to the bush.  The buffalo
Bellows.  And locusts go

Choking the wells.  Far o’er the hills and dells
Wanders th’ affrighted eye, beholding blasted
The pleasant grass:  the forest’s leafy mass
Wilted; its waters waned; its grace exhausted;
Its creatures wasted.