26 FEBRUARY 1881, Page 16

DESOLATION.

IN fiercest heat of Indian June, I rode . Across an arid waste of burning sand, At mid-day ; all around. the lonely land Seemed. desert, and in shrunken channel flowed The river ; overhead, a sky that glowed, Not deeply blue, but wan with lurid glare. The tyrant Sun, with fixed, unwinking stare, Veiled by no cloudlet, in mid-heaven abode, And crushed all Nature with his blinding ray. No living thing was to be seen, but one Huge alligator ; on a sandbank prone The loathly saurian, basking and serene, Grim master of that grim, unlovely scene, Fit type of utter desolation, lay. H. C. I.