Blended by fading moonlight with the grass —
The long brown grass that bends beneath the dew —
Supple, subtle, and silent: eyes of brass
That rove in solemn fierceness o'er the view;
Seeking his living by the shadow'd walks
Of sleeping man: Ingwi the Leopard stalks.

Thing from the utter silence of the wild —
Thing from the outer darkness of the night —
Father of terror, of grey fear the child
Ingwi, (in peace softer than silk; in fight
Harder than steel,) cringing in fear draws nigh
To stay his hunger where the White Men lie.

The chickens huddle in an abject dread —
A dread no more than he, the Hunter, knows,
Yet quenches and goes in to seek his bread
Within the precincts of the wired close.
Goes in ... and sudden finds that he has bought
His life to lose his life — that he is caught.

The weighted door has closed, and he is trapp'd ...
Gods of the Wilderness, what agony!
Dumbly he noses where the wires mapp'd
Against the darkness show where all is free.
Dumbly he strives to stretch a fore-paw through
To touch the long grass, bending with the dew.

Dumbly he yearns toward the outer black,
(His moon, that has sunk down for ever now,)
He sees a rabbit loping down the track,
And hears the chilly night-breeze lisp and sough.
Lisp in the leaves that were his but this day
And now seem leagues, and countless leagues, away.

Far, far away the brooding mountains lie,
The silver streams that croon among the ferns.
The wide umsasas black against the sky,
The dreaming valleys where the glow-worm burns.
The veld has vanish'd with the closing door —
The veld that shall be Ingwi's never more.

The flash of lights — the shouts of men awake!
And like a thunderbolt he strikes the wire,
Struggling in fury for his life's own sake —
Wrapp'd in a whirling madness of desire,
Gathering his mighty power in his rage,
With thrice-fold strength he tears away the cage.

He fights, and he is free; the door is down;
The great dogs are upon him in a breath —
Great hunters — but the half-bred boar-hound brown
Falls struggling in the sobbing throes of death;
And Flo, his mate, her neck ripp'd half away,
Sinks dead before this Fury brought to bay.

Gods of the Wilderness, Ingwi is free!
The rabbit flies in ecstasy of fear,
And Ingwi seeks that place where he would be —
Where neither man nor animal shall peer.
Coughing the choking life-blood as he goes
He seeks a hidden death-bed that he knows.

Blended by coming dawn-light with the ground
That drinks his crimson power as it drips;
Seeking his chosen hiding without sound,
Though dry with suffering are his burning lips.
Silent and savage 'neath the paling sky,
Riddled with shot, Ingwi goes back to die.