PART FIRST.

Where the light laughs in through the tree-tops And sports with the tangled glade, In the depths of an Afric forest My earliest scenes were laid.

In a bower that was merry with smilax From the grimace of no-where, I woke I was born on the first day of April And they called me a jungle joke.

And the voices of birds were about me— And the beat and the flutter of wing; While morning returned at the trumpet Of Tusky, our elephant king.

My nurse was a crooning old beldame Who gazed in the palms of my hands And vowed I was destined to travel In many and marvellous lands.

But little I heeded her croaking, For I gamboled the whole day long, And swung by my tail from the tree-top, Or joined in the jungle song.