39 Untamed Poems About Lions

“The Lions” by Edwin Curran

The jungle glistens like a cloud—
Purple-cool, tree-deep, lake-pearled;
Where lions lurk and thrash and crowd,
Like lands that battle for the world.
Behold, one lion leaps for his prey,
Trotting like a saffron mist,
As savage nations in our day
Pounce on some weak antagonist.

Across the jungle-painted grass
His roar breaks through the tropic air;
And he runs like a tawny flame—
Swift yellow stroke of lightning there.
His cry is like the thunder’s sound,
Shaking leaf and bough and bole;
And he is part of Africa—
The yellow monarch in her soul.

Painted birds fly through the trees
And stain the sky with brown on blue,
Hammering with their wings the breeze,
Hitting songs across the dew.
Parrots gaudy as a star
Tap their bells and chatter sound.
Each insect sweeps his dim guitar
Like music hidden in the ground.

The tawny lion goes like a shot—
A daub of gold against the green,
Scenting a wounded bleeding doe
That he is following unseen.
A spangled serpent lights a tree,
A coiling flame around it, curled;
But the old lion goes great and free,
The master of his jungle world

Bravely born and bravely bred,
Proud as a diamond of his fire,
This yellow monarch of the south
Goes like the hosts that swarmed to Tyre.
Hungry to kill, he scents the air,
And roars into beginning night,
His blond mane tossing up its hair,
His eyes two pools of blazing light.

He stops and lips the evening gale,
Reading the wind across the trees;
Giant cat in his tawny mail,
Spelling out the trail-warm breeze.
Then on he darts as though with wings,
To find his prey and drink the blood
And feast upon the harmless things
That God has put into the wood.

A gorilla slouches through the bush;
A leopard’s eyes shoot stars of light;
The deep luxuriant forest hush
Hides serpents beetle-colored, bright.
The crane nods sleeping, spindle-shanked;
Gray monkeys troop and clack and peer;
A jungle stream goes emerald-banked,
Purring like a wild-cat near.

The cinnamon-colored land awakes
Around the lion fold on fold;
Yellowing with fruit, blue with lakes,
Stuck with fireflies burnished gold.
Gray monkeys watch the lion and talk,
Lassoing trees with leather tails;
Some far palms by the seaside walk,
And near-by sing the nightingales.

The moon hangs like a petal of gold
Broken upon the western sky.
The blue dusk deepens fold on fold,
The shattered day lies down to die.
Here in this wild primeval place,
Savage, wooded, poisonous, still,
Far from mankind and human face,
The old lion goes to hunt and kill.

His prey is near, the scent is strong,
He roars out in his ghastly mirth.
There, bleeding like a shattered song,
His wounded doe is run to earth.
But as he leaps to take its throat
A younger lion leaps up and cries;
And there the two lions stand like stone,
The fires of ages in their eyes.

It took the centuries to make
These lions’ sun-colored bodies bright,
These great-teethed felines from the brake,
Tawny, crouching, cruel as night.
Their eyes turn red—these cats of brown
Swift as wind, lithe as air,
Savage-maned and monarch-crowned,
With blazing eyes and yellow hair.

The painted snake makes not a sound;
The frightened birds shake in the tree:
Like two great russet clouds they bound,
These monarchs, for the mastery.
The teak-tree groans, the gum is still,
The coffee-tree nods to the duel;
An elephant calf stares from a hill,
A lizard watches from a pool.

White silver moon, an eye of snow,
Looks from the dusk with beauty hung,
Her pale lids open and aglow
Where starry ladders are far-flung.
The lions’ steel sinews knot in cords;
There is a crash of yellow forms;
The zebu and chimpanzee run;
The jungle with the battle storms.

A roar that rocks the ground is heard,
And monkeys chatter, parrots flee.
The coiled snake and the gaudy bird
Slink from their everlasting tree.
The colors of the painted land
All disappear as quick as light;
The great palms tremble, and the hand
Of God draws over all the night.

The dotted turtles hunt the ground,
Now rocking with the battling pair;
The night birds, startled, make no sound,
The vultures scent the bloody air.
Hyenas wait to eat the dead
And pick the polished bones and wail;
A python crawls with silken tread
On silver plates of sliding mail.

The wild things of the jungle know
A battle of the kings is on;
The zebras cry, the tree-cats yell;
The tall giraffe has swiftly flown;
The spiders hang on polished webs—
Greenish discs of jeweled light;
A frog is croaking in his well,
The fireflies shower through the night.

The two huge cats are at their duel—
Two yellow whirlwinds, hard as stones;
Snapping, biting, wild and cruel,
Tearing flesh and crunching bones.
Jaws upraised and crashing shut,
Lifting, sinking, slashing there;
Paws like razors slitting skin,
Teeth like knives of white that tear.

The painted flowers drip with blood,
The hiding snake is crushed below;
The lizard stamps into the ground;
The trees shake as when whirlwinds blow.
The monkeys swing away and run;
The wildcat looks and leaps away;
The leopard, spotted with the sun,
Slides by into the mist of gray.

The poisonous flies have scented blood,
And elephants have come to peer;
Ant-eaters look into the wood
To see the battle of the year.
The scorpion squirms into the view,
And things unspeakable, to see—
Speared and horned and crusted blue,
The toad and reptile infantry.

The jungle sees the battle rage
Intense, ferocious, swift and fast—
A terrible and an awful sight,
So horrible toward the last
The lions have cowed the very night,
And stunned the shadows and the trees:
A scuffle like the break of worlds,
The shattering of centuries.

But the old lion shows greater skill,
With harder blows and mastery;
His teeth were longer trained to kill,
His strength upholds his majesty.
Yet the young lion is quick and strong—
So wiry lithe he seems to float;
He worries the old lion for long—
Till the old lion leaps at his throat.

They wave in battle, spinning round
Together, snarling, thundering, bright,
Thrashing through the dry dead grass;
Until the day has turned to night,
And left the young lion dead and still—
In ribbons, mangled on the sod,
His broken body cold and chill—
The old lion still his lord and god.

The old master of the forest stands
With one paw on the fallen breast—
The monarch of the jungle lands
Whose victory challenges the best.
A king is dead—long live the king!
He roars, his eyes like coals aglow.
He calls his mate, a lioness there,
To come and feast and eat the doe.

He calls his lady through the night,
And she replies and comes to him,
Where the dead doe lies still and white,
To banquet in the shadows dim:
Like nations, when the war is done,
Who gather at the feasting board
To dine upon the hard-won prey,
Each like a monarch and a lord.

The snake slips back into his tree,
The monkeys chatter now in peace;
And over the blue woods there falls
The age-old night of centuries.
The fireflies hang their lanterns back
To star the dark; the beetles bell;
The lizards creep, and nightbirds sing;
The snail is dancing in his shell.

The yellow floods are still and quiet;
The sky is blue like trembling glass;
Beasts, birds and toads and insects riot
Beneath the stars in jungle grass.
After the battle night alone;
Moon-mist, ghostly poison-flowers;
Trumpeting of beasts that moan
Through creeping crawling crimson hours.

A shaky moon rocks in the night,
A grumbling sea, far palms, the crash
Of monkeys chattering as they fight;
Gray serpents going like a flash;
Slow turtles, swifter bats on wing;
Worms creeping back, and spiders, flies;
Lizards with poisonous following,
And fanged things in their paradise.

Slimy silken bellies squirming,
Offal-scented beasts of prey;
Hungry, lethal toads and reptiles
Who move by night and hide by day:
Tearing flesh of birds that nest,
Rending bones that drip with blood.
So the jackals strike and quest
In the world’s jungle brotherhood.

But must these creepers in their turn
Be conquered in the coming light,
As new hope rises on the world
And the old lions go with the night?
Yet who can tell what signs of death
Await the nations one by one?
Ah, what will happen in earth’s dark night
Before the rising of the sun?