Explore "A Memorial of Africa" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. Upon a rock I sat -- a mountain-side, / Far, far forsaken of the old sea's lip; / A rock where ancient waters' rise and dip, / Recoil and plunge, eddy, and oscillant tide, / Had worn and worn, while races lived and died, / Involved channels. Where the sea-weed's drip / Followed the ebb, now crumbling lichens sip / Sparse dews of heaven that down with sunset slide. / I sat long-gazing southward. A dry flow / Of withering wind sucked up my drooping strength, / Itself weak from the desert's burning length. / Behind me piled, away and up did go / Great sweeps of savage mountains -- up, away, / Where snow gleams ever, panthers roam, they say.
II. This infant world has taken long to make, / Nor hast Thou done with it, but mak'st it yet, / And wilt be working on when death has set / A new mound in some churchyard for my sake. / On flow the centuries without a break; / Uprise the mountains, ages without let; / The lichens suck; the hard rock's breast they fret; / Years more than past, the young earth yet will take. / But in the dumbness of the rolling time, / No veil of silence shall encompass me -- / Thou wilt not once forget and let me be; / Rather wouldst thou some old chaotic prime / Invade, and, moved by tenderness sublime, / Unfold a world, that I, thy child, might see.