Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79. | | | | Introductory to Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia | | Snow in Abyssinia | | William Pitt Palmer (1805–1884) |
| | (From The Wonder That Might Have Been)
BRUCE of Kinnaird could scarce repress the smile | |
| That twitched the bearded ambush of his mouth, | |
| When, in his quest of the mysterious Nile, | |
| Amid the perilous wilds of the swart South, | |
| An old man told him, with a grave surprise | 5 |
| Which made his childlike wonder almost grand, | |
| How, in his youth, there fell from out the skies | |
| A feathery whiteness over all their land, | |
| A strange, soft, spotless something, pure as light, | |
| For which their questioned language had no name, | 10 |
| That shone and sparkled for a day and night, | |
| Then vanished all as weirdly as it came, | |
| Leaving no vestige, gleam, or hue, or scent, | |
| On the round hills or in the purple air, | |
| To satisfy their mute bewilderment | 15 |
| That such a presence had indeed been there! | | | | |
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