C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Lion’s Ride
By Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810–1876)
W
Wilt bind the king of the cloudy sands?
Idiot fool! he has burst from thy hands and bands,
And speeds like Storm through his far domain.
See! he crouches down in the sedge,
By the water’s edge,
Making the startled sycamore boughs to quiver!
Gazelle and giraffe, I think, will shun that river.
And the Caffre, mooring his light canoe
To the shore, glides down through the hushed karroo,
And the watch-fires burn in the Hottentot kraals,
And the antelope seeks a bed in the bush
Till dawn shall blush,
And the zebra stretches his limbs by the tinkling fountain,
And the changeful signals fade from the Table Mountain.
Seest such a tall giraffe! She stalks,
All majesty, through the desert walks,—
In search of water to cool her tongue and brow.
From tract to tract of the limitless waste
Behold her haste!
Till, bowing her long neck down, she buries her face in
The reeds, and kneeling, drinks from the river’s basin.
Those globe-eyes glare! The gigantic reeds
Lie cloven and trampled like puniest weeds,—
The lion leaps on the drinker’s neck with a roar!
Oh, what a racer! Can any behold,
’Mid the housings of gold
In the stables of kings, dyes half so splendid
As those on the brindled hide of yon wild animal blended?
In the breast of his writhing prey; around
Her neck his loose brown mane is wound.
Hark, that hollow cry! She springs up from beneath
And in agony flies over plains and heights.
See, how she unites,
Even under such monstrous and torturing trammel,
With the grace of the leopard, the speed of the camel!
That spreadeth around all bare and wide;
Meanwhile, adown her spotted side
The dusky blood-gouts rush like rain—
And her woeful eyeballs, how they stare
On the void of air!
Yet on she flies—on, on; for her there is no retreating;
And the desert can hear the heart of the doomed one beating!
A sand-spout out of that sandy ocean, upcurls
Behind the pair in eddies and whirls;
Most like some colossal brand,
Or wandering spirit of wrath
On his blasted path,
Or the dreadful pillar that lighted the warriors and women
Of Israel’s land through the wilderness of Yemen.
Sails, hoarsely screaming, down the sky;
The bloody hyena, be sure, is nigh,—
Fierce pillager, he, of the charnel-house!
The panther, too, who strangles the Cape-Town sheep
As they lie asleep,
Athirst for his share in the slaughter, follows;
While the gore of their victim spreads like a pool in the sandy hollows!
His tottering throne to the last: with might
He plunges his terrible claws in the bright
And delicate cushions of her sides.
Yet hold!—fair play!—she rallies again!
In vain, in vain!
Her struggles but help to drain her life-blood faster;
She staggers, gasps, and sinks at the feet of her slayer and master!
The death-rattle slightly convulses her throat;
Mayest look thy last on that mangled coat,
Besprent with sand, and foam, and gore!
Adieu! The orient glimmers afar,
And the morning-star
Anon will rise over Madagascar brightly.—
So rides the lion in Afric’s deserts nightly.