Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/51

Than surerfooted more unerring doom
Of hate fraternal, or implacable
Unholy violence of holy men,
Who, glutting a false god's bloodthirstiness,
Hale them, poor innocents, to sacrifice!
A king hath died; and all dead emperors
They worship with lewd rites of cruelty,
By "watering" malignant evil dust
With what in its malignant vampire life
A vain, unstable, sanguinary soul
Relish'd to quaff from a foe's hollow skull,
More than all nectar—crimson human blood.
Yea, all the forest is one Golgotha;
Skeletons, skulls, and cumbering carcases,
Confused in one delirious dread dream!
Behold! under yon ancient fetish tree,
Defiled with slaughter of five centuries,
Near an uncouth hewn stone (a phallic idol,
Begrimed, and hung with ghastly offerings)
A human victim horribly tormented!
One blade thrust like a bit between his jaws
Is strain'd and fasten'd there; while many knives