Scot in the Desert

All day the sand, like golden chains,

The desert distance binds;

All day the crouching camels groan,

Whipped by the gritty winds.

The mountain, flayed by sun, reveals

Red muscles, wounds of stone,

While on its face the black goats swarm

And bite it to the bone.

Here light is death; on every rock

It stretches like a cry,

Its fever burns up every bush,

It drinks each river dry.

It cracks with thirst the creviced lip,

It fattens black the tongue,

It turns the storm cloud into dust,

The morning dew to dung.

Men were not made to flourish here,

They shroud their heads and fly -

Save one, who stares into the sun

With sky-blue British eye.

Who stares into the zenith sun

And smiles and feels no pain,

Blood-cooled by Calvin, mist and bog,

And summers in the rain.