Читать книгу The Dyak chief, and other verses - Erwin Clarkson Garrett - Страница 6

When over the palm-topped endless hills

First broke the golden day,

The taintless breeze in the highest trees

Laughed as I swung away.

Laughed as I climbed the mountain path

Or skirted the river’s bank,

And the great lianes sung to me

As on my knees I drank.

And the great lianes softly swayed

And twisted in snake-like guise,

Till I lost their sight in the leafy height

Where peeped the purple skies.

And down through the dank morasses

I leapt from clod to clod,

O’er fallen trunk and lifted root

And the ooze of the sunken sod—

Where the tiny trees stand tall and straight, A mass of mossy green, And lighting all like a fairy hall The sunlight sifts between.

Day by day through stress and strain

I pressed my marches through;

Day by day through strain and stress

The weary hours flew.

And silent, from the dank brown leaves

As swept my hurrying tread,

The little waiting leeches rose

And caught me as I sped.

Till my feet and ankles bled in streams—

But I let them clinging stay,

And they swelled to seven times their size

And glutted and fell away.

For never time had I to stop,

And so they sucked their fill,

As I splashed through the knee-deep rivers

And clambered the jungle hill.

And only night could halt me,

And the stars in their proud parade,

They bade me look to the fray before,

And back to the kampong maid.