A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/Lance Fallaw
THE SPIRIT OF HIDDEN PLACES.[1]
Over the mountain's shoulder, round the unweathered cape,
In lands beyond the sky-line, there hides a nameless shape,—
Whether of fiend or goddess no mortal well may know;
But when she speaks—with flushing cheeks, they one by one must go.
To men in far old cities, scanning the curious chart,
Her voice would sound at midnight, like music in the heart;
Across the wrinkled parchment a glory seemed to fall,
And pageants pass like shapes in glass along the pictured wall.
She led the sails of Lisbon beyond the Afric shore,
Winning a world of wonders by seas unknown before.
She watched the sturdy captains of Holland's India fleet
Planting their post on that grim coast where the two oceans meet.
Yea, and in earlier ages, what ghostly race were they
Who left the eastward waters to tread the inland way?
Who bore the gold of Ophir and built the tower of stone—
But left no sign save empty mine, and rampart overthrown.
But others find their footsteps, and strike the trail anew.
How fared the burghers onward across the wild Karoo!
And still, with hand at bridle and eyes that search the wind,
With strain and stress the white men press that mocking sprite to find.
We seek her by the valley,—she moves upon the height;
The rainbow stands athwart us to blind her from our sight;
Along the sea-bound bastion her steps are hid in spray,
And though we dream,—with morning gleam the lustre dies away.
Yet sometimes for a moment men think to feel her nigh:
When first the lost Moon Mountain unveils to Stanley's eye;
Or when the Great White Wanderer beheld Zambesi leap
With earthquake-stroke and sounding smoke down the stupendous steep.
And then again we lose her, for lack of wizard skill,
Only the message liveth that tells us, Further still!
Yet could we come upon her, and seize, and hold her fast,
The onward track would something lack of its old magic past.
No secret on the ridges, no whisper in the air,
No sense of paths untrodden, no shadow anywhere;
Earth robbed of half her glamour, and ocean void of awe—
The proud pursuit that brings not fruit is man's eternal law
DAY AND NIGHT UP-COUNTRY.
O'er the unshaded veldt
The ruthless sun
Pauses, as though he felt
His course half run.
The noontide world stands still
And gasps for air;
Lifts every breathless hill
A forehead bare.
Along the quivering ground
The heat-haze hangs,
Casting a mirage round
The aloe fangs.
Down by the dam, knee deep,
A brooding band,
Like statues seen in sleep
The cattle stand.
And stretched beside them lies
Their Kaffir herd,
Watching with narrowed eyes
The weaver bird.
In the hot glare, how near
The distance seems!
The league-long hills show clear
Through all our dreams.
Hills in whose giant tower
Soft darkness hides,
And whence at evening's hour
Her shadow glides.
Blest moment! quickly come—
Thy breeze we know,
Waking the lips grown dumb,
The pulses slow.
Come with thy starry sky,
A boundless deep;
Under thy quiet eye
We would not sleep,
But watch the lonely land
Her breast unfold,
When night's grey colours stand
Athwart the gold;
See the long mountains bend,
And take new shape;
Strange shadows to descend,
And mists to drape.
Till morning's lighter air
Blows up from far,—
Day, thou art wondrous fair
By sun or star!
OLD ST. THOMAS' CHURCHYARD, DURBAN.
No English willow for our English dead:
The soft flamboyant shades their southern sleep.
On the spare grass syringa blooms are shed,
And lithe virginias creep
Over the stones where the swift lizards tread.
The rose is here, but with a faint perfume;
And, standing 'thwart the hedge, the kaffir-boom
Holds in mid-air its tufts of poppy red.
Worship has gone, but Peace has never left
The church deserted, with the toppling tower
And the dead creeper—Time can make no theft
Of her unpassing hour,
For Time in this retreat seems wing-bereft.
The world is all apart—far, far away
The eyes scarce catch the shapes of Bluff and Bay,
Where tree and gable leave an opening cleft.
Slowly the great gate opens, as 'twere loth
To yield its sombre pathways to our tread.
Slowly we saunter, reading thro' thick growth
The records of the dead.
The spirit of the place demands an oath
Of silence, and of endless quietness.
Yet many here on whom the lilies press
Had little time for reverie or sloth.
Far off at times they seem—and yet how near
Those days of simpler manners, sterner life,
The settler-days of hatchet, gun, and spear,
Of hardship and of strife.
Labour and action try the pioneer,
But not the heart-ache easier dreamers know;
Else had he never built and founded so,
Nor we, who follow, traced his footsteps here.
Strange temple! where the savage horde of old
Reared their round huts, and cleared their tilling-place:
Now thou hast rest and slumber to enfold
Those of another race.
Does peace come never till the pulse be cold?
Here, surely, could the living find her too.
Yet must we win her; there is much to do,
And this land's charter still but half unrolled.
Lo! evening falls; far over Mariannhill
The sunset hangs, and the rich after-glow
Sets the dark woods on fire; the air is still,
The grey bats come and go;
A thousand insects chirp in chorus shrill,
The firefly wanders with her elfin light,
And the young moon grows on the speedy night
That gathers round us ere we leave the hill.
SIMON VAN DER STEL.
Southward ever the Dutchman steered,
Southward with right good will;
No more the sea-worn sailor feared
The Cape of Table Hill.
No longer frowned the savage land
With famine fierce and fell,
For bounteous were the heart and hand
Of Simon van der Stel.
Not as the rest, for greed of spoil,
He ruled by Table Bay;
In new-built barn and seeded soil,
His little kingdom lay.
Cornfield and garden, oak and vine,
He loved and tended well.
"Who plants a tree is friend of mine,"
Quoth Simon van der Stel.
All in a pleasant vale was laid
The dorp that bears his name,
With bough of fruit and leaf of shade,
To bless the founder's aim.
Here oft he sat in simple state,
A kindly tale to tell;
And children kept the birthday fête
Of Simon van der Stel.
Yet not beside the guarded Cape
His narrowed fancy dwelt;
Not only in the golden grape
Was all the flame he felt.
He knew the thought that feeds and fills,
The ceaseless northward spell;
Three hundred miles to the Copper Hills
Rode Simon van der Stel.
The exiles of the frugal French
A southern refuge sought;
He bade them prove, by hedge and trench,
The skill their fathers taught.
He watched his race of sturdy boers,
He saw their numbers swell;
"Send wives for lusty bachelors,"
Wrote Simon van der Stel.
Full thirty years her quiet charm
The Cape-land o'er him cast,
Till at Constantia's favoured farm
He turned to rest at last.
The builders from the Haarlem wreck
Dug deep and founded well;
But chief of all their work to deck
Was Simon van der Stel.
True statesman of that elder day,
The Dutchman's praise be thine!
Nor lesser claim need Britons lay
To kinship of thy line.
Two races at our councils sit,
One nation yet to dwell;
And both are heirs, by worth and wit,
Of Simon van der Stel.
A CAPE HOMESTEAD.
Just that glimpse of the Table Rock
Seems the key to the breathless spell.
Never, you'd say, could the wild wind shock
A single leaf from the oaks of Stel.
Four white gables, with scroll and bend,
Lettered and dated, nobly wide;
Red roof, and the shutters, end to end,
Flung back at the lattice side.
Sleep for ever seems nestling there,
All uncounted the hours go by.
Silent sits in his deep old chair,
That white-haired man, with the dreaming eye.
Does he think, as the shadows fall,
And the swift bats skim in the evening glow,
Of the haunting voices that used to call
Through the doorways long ago?
Think of the days when the young folks made
Mirth and music beneath that roof,
Danced at night in the moon's soft shade,
And rode and hunted by kop and kloof?
Yes, and the time when the boys would trek,
When the Cape cart stood by the open door,
Till they watched it rounding the far-off nek . . .
And another came back no more.
Oh, white nest, but thy birds are far;
East and northward the strong sons go;
One where the lone Nyanzas are,
One where the shoals of the Orange flow.
One is treading the world's wide path
In crowded cities beyond the seas;
And one found rest, in the hour of wrath,
On a warrior's couch of ease.
Bid them come back again—those that can,
Lead them hither o'er berg and veldt.
Comely woman and proper man,
Let them kneel where of old they knelt.
Would they not in a moment take
Step and voice from the years long fled?
Just as soon might the dead one wake
From his wild Shangani bed!
Yet he waiteth, the grey old sire,
On the pillared stoep, by the creeping vines.
The low sun wraps him with rosy fire,
And the thin gum-shadows are drawn like lines.
The Kaffir, driving the great-horned herds,
Passes, crooning a quiet tune;
And the mountains mutter, too low for words,
"We shall comfort him very soon."
- ↑ For permission to include these selections from Mr. Fallaw's poems, the Editor is indebted to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., the owners of the copyright.