Snow in Abyssinia

Bruce of Kinnaird could scarce repress the smile
  That twitched the bearded ambush of his mouth,
When, in his quest of the mysterious Nile,
  Amid the perilous wilds of the swart South,
An old man told him, with a grave surprise
  Which made his childlike wonder almost grand,
How, in his youth, there fell from out the skies
  A feathery whiteness over all their land,
A strange, soft, spotless something, pure as light,
  For which their questioned language had no name,
That shone and sparkled for a day and night,
  Then vanished all as weirdly as it came,
Leaving no vestige, gleam, or hue, or scent,
  On the round hills or in the purple air,
To satisfy their mute bewilderment
  That such a presence had indeed been there!