Livingstone in Africa/Prologue

by Hon. Roden Noel

 

Our tuneful students, with dull downward eyes,
Measuring one another in a dream,
Lisp, "how the pigmy time degenerates!
"Where are your 'heroes?' we distinguish none:
"Your 'heroes' have no literary style!
"Lo! we discern some dust upon their feet."
They, poring on impalpable pale shades
Of vanish'd years, fantastically warble,
Singing sweet songs of phantoms in a cloud!
Delicate warblers, fleeting as a cloud!

I lay my wreath upon a hero's grave.
There let it bloom; or let it wither there!