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Title: In A Tropical Garden
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
(Peradeniya, Ceylon)
I
The sun moves here as a master-mage of nature all day long,
With fingers of heat and light that touch to a mystical growth all things.
The spell of him puts pale Time to sleep, as an opiate strange and strong,
And a waft of his wand, the wind, enchantment brings.
II
The python roots of the rubber-tree where the cobra slips in peace
Are wonders that he has waved from the earth as a presage of his power.
And the giant stems of the bamboo-grass, the pool astounded, sees,
Are a marvel to keep it still hour after hour.
III
The long lianas that reach in dreamy rout from tree to tree
Are dazed with the sense of sap that he calls to the tangle of their sprays.
The scarlet-hearted hibiscus stands entranced and the torrid bee
Is husht upon its rim, as in amaze
IV
And there the palms, the talipot with its lofty blossom-spire,
The cocoanut and the slim areca listening await
What sorceries of his trembling rays of equatorial fire
Will next be laid upon some lesser mate.
V
The river, too, that he winds as a magic circle round the wealth
He has here engendered, has the glide of a serpent lost in trance;
And scents of clove and cinnamon that sip cool from it, in stealth
Pour it upon the air like necromance.
VI
And down where the rain-tree and the rife breadfruit together lean
Over its flow, and the flying-foxes hanging head to earth
Suddenly drop then flap aloft on large bat-wing, is seen
More of his mazing wizardry in birth.
VII
All day long it is so that his hot hypnotic eye commands
With steady ray; and the earth obedient brings enchantment forth.
All night long in the humid dark the high-voiced hyla-bands
Chant of it in chill strain from South to North.
VIII
A wondrous mage, in a land whose dreams are made reality
As swift as clouds are made when the young Monsoon is in the South.
A land that is born of the sea and by it destined e'er to be
Beyond all fear of famishing and drouth.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: In A Tropical Garden
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