Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.
Africa
By Maria Lowell (18211853)S
Sent back the sky’s fierce glare;
She folded her mighty hands,
And waited with calm despair,
While the red sun dropped down the streaming air.
Builded of cinnamon;
Huge ivory, row on row,
Varying its columns dun,
Barred with the copper of the setting sun.
The low and sullen roar
Of lions, with eyes of flame,
That haunted its reedy shore,
And the neigh of the hippopotamus,
Trampling the watery floor.
From the sunset-glow could take;
Dark as the primal night
Ere over the earth God spake:
It seemed for her a dawn could never break.
And sighed with a dreary sound,
As when by the sand’s eclipse
Bewildered men are bound,
And like a train of mourners
The columned winds sweep round.
I lit, now smouldering in decay:
Through futures vast I grope my way.
My children round my knees upgrew,
And from my breast sucked Wisdom’s dew.
Fresh knowledge still my song o’erbrimmed,
Fresh knowledge, which no time had dimmed.
The spell they wrought, and on the blue
Foretold the stars in order due;—
Something to tell its influence clear;
Uprose my Memnon, with nice ear,
Until the sun rose from his lair
Swifter, at greet of lutings rare.
Could knit together feeble hands
To uprear Thought’s supreme commands:
They pitched the Pyramids’ great pile;
Where light and shade divided smile;
Did Painting with fair movement go,
Leading the long processions slow.
To serve my children’s skill I brought,
And still for fresh devices sought.
Their great light quenched in twilight gray,
Within their winding tombs they lay,
And looked into my sleepless eye,
Which only turned to see them die.
Alive and pure and strong as flame,
At last to lift me from my shame;
Felt in the air their great wings row,
As down they dipped in journeying slow.
One strong voice to another said,—
‘Why sits she here so drear and dead?
Beyond the utmost verge of day,
Her myriad children dance and play.’
Then knew my pulses finer pain,
Which wrought like fire within my brain.
A mellower light broods on the air,
And heavier blooms swing incense rare.
The burning arrows of the sun;
Erect as palms stood every one.
In song and dance and endless play;
The children of the world are they.
Their bread, on emerald dishes laid,
Sets forth a banquet in each shade.
Their honey for them evermore;
They shall not learn such toilsome lore;
The birds that flaunt along the air,
And deck them in their feathers rare.
And brought fresh generations gay
On my savannas green to play.
My careless ones, and the great sea
Blew back their endless sighs to me:
Would gape; I saw keen spears of gold
Thrusting red hearts down, not yet cold,
Stole upward through Earth’s ribbéd stones,
And crept along through all my zones.
But still they followed on the air,
And still I hear them everywhere.
Till the slow-moving hand of Fate
Shall lift me from my sunken state.”
Silently sate she on her throne,
Rigid and black, as carved in stone.