LION AND LIONESS
by: Edwin Markham (1852-1940)
- NE night
we were together, you and I,
- And had unsown Assyria for a lair,
- Before the walls of Babylon rose in air.
- How languid hills were heaped along the sky,
- And white bones marked the wells of alkali,
- When suddenly down the lion-path a sound . . .
- The wild man-odor . . . then a crouch, a bound,
- And the frail Thing fell quivering with a cry!
-
- Your yellow eyes burned beautiful with light:
- The dead man lying there quieted and white:
- I roared my triumph over the desert wide,
- Then stretched out, glad for the sands and satisfied;
- And through the long, star-stilled Assyrian night,
- I felt your body breathing by my side.
"Lion and Lioness" is
reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900.
Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915. |
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