Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/114

Alas! how changed!
. . Bowery villages roll volumed clouds
Of fiery smoke, staining the limpid light;
Rich harvests, charr'd, or trampled, or ungarner'd
Idly luxuriant, meet the mournful eye.
While, even beside a fair golden array
Of bounteous corn, a few starved boys and women,
Gaunt as yon skeletons around them strewn,
Crawl; listless, hopeless famine in their eyes;
All that were dear, slain, tortured, or expell'd
By arm'd assaults of the fierce slave-driver.
And ah! these skeletons! the tales they tell!
Beside fair river-banks, beside wreck'd huts,
Under green trees, under red rocks, in caves,
Ghastly anatomies, in attitudes
Of mortal anguish, writhed, and curl'd, and twisted,
Mutually clasp'd in transports of despair!

In one closed cabin, when mine eyes conform
To its faint twilight, on a rude raised bed
Appear two skeletons in mouldering weeds;