Page:Livingstone in Africa.djvu/92

Perennial founts of eloquent, warm words
Are these untutor'd children of the sun!

Now reigns the blazing furnace of full noon:
And save for little rills that want no sleep,
Silence, before the intolerable glory,
Falls on a cowering world of beast and man.
Bird-song has waned, and even the stridulent
Cicala sleeps; a rare bee drowsily
Explores a twilit labyrinth of flowers;
Delicate blossoms dallying in warm airs,
Bowing and yielding to the velvet lover;
While heaven-blue elves with pulsing fans alight
Over a ruin of red leaves, or sail
From light to shadow, like a jubilant
Song, failing in a tenderer low minor.
Gorgeous insects of metallic gleam
Waver, and glance, and glimmer on the fronds.
Low, murmurous sound pervades all emerald aisles,
As though the floral earth and leaves were breathing.
Life teems! a myriad hidden mandibles,