Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/116

With falling notes of bowery turtle-doves,
Mantled in hues of tender summer cloud.
Hearken!—a rnsh! a trample of arm'd men!
A sudden deafening crash of musketry!
Hundreds of blithe love-dreaming youths and maidens,
Bathed in their own life-blood, and one another's,
Fall, with one last death-quivering embrace:
While women in rude violating arms
Of strangers struggle; and the flower of men
Strain their necks impotent in yokes of iron,
Grappled around them by their insolent foes.
Hundreds in panic blind—man, woman, child—
Plunge among waters of deep Lualaba;
Whose drowning bodies the swift current hurries;
These, maim'd swollen corpses, drifting far away,
Hideously-croaking famish'd alligators
Fight for portentous; lashing furious trains,
Pulling asunder human trunks and limbs!

But follow ye the stolen journeying slave!
Behold her toiling shackled, starved, and goaded