ONE night we were together, you and I, <br />And had unsown Assyria for a lair, <br />Before the walls of Babylon rose in air. <br />How languid hills were heaped along the sky, <br />And white bones marked the wells of alkali, <br />When suddenly down the lion-path a sound . . . <br />The wild man-odor . . . then a crouch, a bound, <br />And the frail Thing fell quivering with a cry! <br /> <br />Your yellow eyes burned beautiful with light: <br />The dead man lying there quieted and white: <br />I roared my triumph over the desert wide, <br />Then stretched out, glad for the sands and satisfied; <br />And through the long, star-stilled Assyrian night, <br />I felt your body breathing by my side.<br /><br />Edwin Markham<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lion-and-lioness/
