THE DEPARTURE FROM THE FOREST.
Reading edition
Where the light laughs in through the tree-tops And sports with the tangled glade, In the depths of an Afric forest My earliest scenes were laid.
In a bower that was merry with smilax From the grimace of no-where, I woke I was born on the first day of April And they called me a jungle joke.
And the voices of birds were about me— And the beat and the flutter of wing; While morning returned at the trumpet Of Tusky, our elephant king.
My nurse was a crooning old beldame Who gazed in the palms of my hands And vowed I was destined to travel In many and marvellous lands.
But little I heeded her croaking, For I gamboled the whole day long, And swung by my tail from the tree-top, Or joined in the jungle song.
