Читать книгу The Dyak chief, and other verses - Erwin Clarkson Garrett - Страница 8

With strips from my torn jacket

I bound my arm and thigh,

And I headed back o’er the leafy track

With hope and spirits high.

And as I sped with leaping heart

All Nature seemed to sing;

And my legs ran red where trickling bled

The head of the Jungle King.

The purring tree-tops called me—

The fleecy clouds rolled by—

And the forest green was a sun-shot sheen,

And the sky was a laughing sky.

And only night could halt me,

And the stars in their proud parade,

They bade me look to the path before

That led to the kampong maid.

Bleeding and torn, spent and worn,

At last I reached the hill,

Whence each hearth-light in the falling night

Was a welcome bright and still.

For each hearth-light in the falling night

Cut clear through the growing gloam—

Of all brave things the best that brings

The weary Wanderer home.

But the waiting watchers spied me,

And met me as I ran;

And they saw the head of the chieftain,

And they hailed me man and man.

But through the heart-whole greetings

I felt the anxious gaze,

And over my brain like a pall was lain

The weight of the Doubter’s craze.

And I begged them to tell me quickly—

For I quailed at the story stayed—

And I asked them if aught had happened

To the head of the kampong maid.

And there in the leafy gloaming—

Where the stars lit one by one,

They told me the tale at my homing—

And I felt the passions run—

Hate as the white-hot flame jet—

Shame as the burning bar—

Grief as the poisoned arrow—

Revenge as the salted scar:

Rankling—roaring—blinding—

Rising and ebbing low;

Till overhead the skies burst red,

And I tottered beneath the blow.

For they told of a White Man’s coming,

And the weapon that carries far;

And his love for the Maid—but over it laid

The hush of the falling star.

Faithlessness—treachery—cunning—

Weakness and love and fear—

Oh very old was the tale they told,

Though born year by year.

And I drew my blade and I leapt away—

But they sprang and held me fast:

And they promised me there by the dead chief’s hair,

My hate should be filled to the last.

And they showed me him bound and knotted

To the base of a splintered tree,

Stripped to the sun and spat upon

And taunted—awaiting me.

And I saw her in the shadows— But ... I might not know her, then— A sneer for the kampong women— And a jest for the kampong men. . . . . . . . . . . And thus in the days of my strength and pride, From over the distant sea, The White Man came in his open shame And stole my love from me.