Songs

Ross was spending his days in a stuffy laboratory dissecting mosquitoes in the suffocating heat, waiting for the monsoon to come. In the evenings he was writing a long poem called In Exile, describing the heat and his own feelings of loneliness and isolation. These lyrics are an extract from that poem.

A moan of thunder fills
The stagnant air; and soon
A black cloud from the hills
Devours the helpless moon.

The Night is full of silent sounds
That walk about the bed
The whining night fly wounds
The ear; the air is dead

The desert is white with heat…
Is this the Judgement Day?
The sky is red as blood;
The very rocks decay

And crack and crumble, and
There is a flame of wind
Wherewith the burning sand
Is ever massed and thinned

The world is white with heat
The world is rent and riven
The world and heavens meet
The lost stars cry in heaven