Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/79

Westward they thronged upon the neighboring plain,
Shut in the low, flat hills whose shallows rolled
To North and South, as marshes by the sea,
Weary horizons; dense the numerous camp
With torches flickered, and the blaze of fires
Flared on the surge of men and sank in smoke;
The sky was reddened with the swarthy glow.
Beneath, the motley multitude immense,
Whom frenzy tore or cowering fear alarmed,
Some feast engaged, the savagery of yore,
And drove them lost to many a loathèd rite.
What fierce idolatry was absent there?
What ritual of woe, what agony?
Wild was the sight and sharp the memory is:
Some, dancing, cut their flesh with knives and flints,
A hideous jubilee; some, further off,
In sullen rage or gibbering idiocy,
Did mutilate their members; boyhood there
In clusters clung, and bright the red fire-flash
Sprang from the bare, keen axes over them;
There mothers flung their infants from their breasts;
Maidens whose lashes could not veil their shame
To darkness went; them men like beasts pursued;
And every beast had there his carnival,—

The sea-cave's brood and reptiles of the slime,