LION AND LIONESS by Edwin Markham
ONE 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.
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