When in the sun the hot red acres smoulder,

Down where the sweating gang its labour plies,

A girl flings down her hoe, and from her shoulder

Unslings her child tormented by the flies.

She takes him to a ring of shadow pooled

By thorn-trees: purpled with the blood of ticks,

While her sharp nails, in slow caresses ruled,

Prowl through his hair with sharp electric clicks,

His sleepy mouth plugged by the heavy nipple,

Tugs like a puppy, grunting as he feeds:

Through his frail nerves her own deep languors ripple

Like a broad river sighing through its reeds.

Yet in that drowsy stream his flesh imbibes

An old unquenched unsmotherable heat—

The curbed ferocity of beaten tribes,

The sullen dignity of their defeat.

Her body looms above him like a hill

Within whose shade a village lies at rest,

Or the first cloud so terrible and still

That bears the coming harvest in its breast.