Page 297 - Malay sketches

XXII

EVENING

Phoebus loosens all his golden hair
Right down the sky
ERIC MACKAY
tale of these little lives is told. If I have
THE
to the
failed
close
to bring you
Malay, so
that you could see into his heart, understand some-
and even with
thing of his life, perhaps sympathise
the motives that will lead him to acts of high
courage and self-sacrifice, then the fault is mine.
The glory of the Eastern morning, the freshness
and the fragrance of the forest, the sultry heat of
these plains and slopes of eternal green on which
the moisture-charged clouds unceasingly pour fat-
ness these are the home of the Malay, the back-
ground against which he stands.
Come, we have done with it all ; let us leave the
in the heat of early afternoon, and
plain, seething
ride up this mountain path, through all the wealth
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