n adequate version of his
words. Once I heard a scholar with a fine voice read aloud from the
Greek poet Homer, and I remember that the sound of the rolling lines
seemed to make my blood stand still. Ignosi's chant, uttered as it was
in a language as beautiful and sonorous as the old Greek, produced
exactly the same effect on me, although I was exhausted with toil and
many emotions.

"Now," he began, "now our rebellion is swallowed up in victory, and our
evil-doing is justified by strength.

"In the morning the oppressors arose and stretched themselves; they
bound on their harness and made them ready to war.

"They rose up and tossed their spears: the soldiers called to the
captains, 'Come, lead us'--and the captains cried to the king, 'Direct
thou the battle.'

"They laughed in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty
thousand.

"Their plumes covered the valleys as the plumes of a bird cover her
nest; they shook their shields and shouted, yea, they shook their
shields in the sunlight; they lusted for battle and were glad.

"They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me;
they cried, 'Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.'

"Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a wind,
and lo! they were not.

"My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the
lightning of my spears; I shook them to the ground with the thunder of
my shoutings.

"They broke--they scattered--they were gone as the mists of the morning.

"They are food for the kites and the foxes, and the place of battle is
fat with their blood.

"Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning?

"Where are the proud ones who tossed their spears and cried, 'He is as
a man already dead'?

"They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out, but
not in sleep.

"They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness; they dwell in
the dead moons; yea, others shall lead away their wives, and their
children shall remember them no more.

"And I--! the king--like an eagle I have found my eyrie.

"Behold! far have I flown in the night season, yet have I returned to
my young at the daybreak.

"Shelter ye under the shadow of my wings, O people, and I will comfort
you, and ye shall not be dismayed.

"Now is the good time, the time of spoil.

"Mine are the cattle on the mountains, mine are the virgins in the
kraals.

"The winter is overpast with storms, the summer is come w