The Jungle Fear
When sunset lights are burning low,
While tents are pitched and camp-fires glow,
Steals o'er us, ere the stars appear,
The furtive sense of Jungle Fear.
For when the dusk is falling fast
Still, as throughout the Ages past,
The stealthy beasts of prey arise
And prowl around with hungry eyes.
Though safe beside the fire I sit
And stretch contented hands to it,
Though all the cheerful camping-ground,
With men and arms, is close around,
I feel the Jungle very near
And shiver with instinctive fear.
For in some hidden cells of me
Stirs the ancestral memory
Of times when from the beasts of prey
At this same hour men slunk away
To seek their caves, and thrilled to hear
The red-eyed Panthers lurking near,
Or the weird, melancholy howl
Of famished packs of Wolves a-prowl.
Long centuries have since passed by
But still these instincts will not die.
And even men in Cities pent,
Who never slept beneath a tent,
Have said that they at twilight feel
The same strange fear across them steal.
Hid in our being, dim and deep,
The terrors of past perils sleep,
A heritage obscure and vast
From Man's unfathomable past.
Each twilight, when the sun burns down
In desert waste, or crowded town,
When shadows fall and night draws near
The dusk brings back the Jungle Fear.