BY SCARLET TORCH AND BLADE
But when the cooling later hours have lulled her hot desire,
She straggles down the blackened trunks in fretful gusts of fire.
The tinder-brush has caught the spark, the temples of the night,
Their purple columns towering high, glow in the amber light.
There's a maple dancing, dancing with her arabesques of gold,
Till her flaming scarfs have shrivelled, fluttered down and touched the mould.
From censers gleaming fitfully the dripping pitch-gum falls,
And heavy incense fills those wild and weirdly lighted halls.
Each hollow stump a cauldron is with molten pitch aglow—
Its roots are twisted holes of pitch that pierce the earth below.
Beyond the burning border of the bracken and the vine,
A ruddy edge is eating through the carpet of the pine,
But the fighters, they will meet it with their paths of upturned soil—
It's many days those little paths have saved in sweat and toil.
She straggles down the blackened trunks in fretful gusts of fire.
The tinder-brush has caught the spark, the temples of the night,
Their purple columns towering high, glow in the amber light.
There's a maple dancing, dancing with her arabesques of gold,
Till her flaming scarfs have shrivelled, fluttered down and touched the mould.
From censers gleaming fitfully the dripping pitch-gum falls,
And heavy incense fills those wild and weirdly lighted halls.
Each hollow stump a cauldron is with molten pitch aglow—
Its roots are twisted holes of pitch that pierce the earth below.
Beyond the burning border of the bracken and the vine,
A ruddy edge is eating through the carpet of the pine,
But the fighters, they will meet it with their paths of upturned soil—
It's many days those little paths have saved in sweat and toil.
[6]
