Classic Poem

The sky is a blue, coiled serpent,
That turns to the earth one blazing eye.
Stricken by that eyeball's torrid glare
The grass curls up and withers—
Curls, as a songololo curls
At the touch of a careless foot;
Dazed, the little veld-flowers droop,
Droop and faint, crumble and die,
And their shadows comfort the veld no more;
Shrivelled, the leaves fall from the trees,
And the trees stand dejected and melancholy,
Like spendthrifts who have scattered their gold,
Or like gaunt ghosts that brood
Over the lost substance of life.