Whilst on my walk one summer day
I saw flamingoes—crowds on crowds—
That floated like reflected clouds
Upon the breast of Zeekoe Vlei:
Some trod the water while they fed
With long necks in its limpid bed,
So peaceful and so white they lay
Upon the sea-green Zeekoe Vlei,
They seemed a flock of new-shorn sheep
That in a meadow feed or sleep.

When I drew near those armies white
Flew up, and in amazed delight
I saw them change before me there
To magic garlands in the air
Of blooms, barbaric, bold and rare—
Rose-dawn and sable night and blood
Commingled in that flowery flood:
Such tricks of colour I had seen
Projected on some picture-screen,
Of Ethiopian girls that danced
Crowned with pink roses, zoned with red,
Nude Ethiopian girls that danced
With ebon limbs and airy tread.

The magic flowers that seemed to grow
Some moments in the arid air,
Glassed in the bright lagoon below,
Now sank to join their doubles there,
And straightway shut: with folded wings
Flamingoes became common things,
Like ducks, or geese, or new-shorn sheep
That in a meadow feed or sleep.
Haply some evening by the Nile
Bronzed Cleopatra, Egypt's queen—
That flame of witchery and guile—
Beheld the picture I have seen,
And of like colours wrought a screen
To deck her scented sleeping-room:
There casual loves, with sharp-drawn breath,
Might in its décor read their doom—
Rose-love, red-dalliance, black death.
—Alas! she, too, went down in gloom
Whose smile no mortal could resist,
And that proud breast great kings had kissed
Shivered … to its latest gasp
Beneath the cold kiss of an asp.