A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/W. C. Scully
THE BROKEN MAST.
One morn in Spring, my love and I
Went down the hillside to the sea;
We watched the sea-birds wheeling fly,
Wild as the waves are, and as free.
The water broke about our feet
And flung us many a fleet foam-feather;
Ah, love, that day was passing sweet,
Spring, sea, and thou and I, together.
High stranded by some long-spent wave
The fragments of a shattered mast
We found, and straight our mood waxed grave
O'er unknown woes and dangers past.
We pictured Norway's pine-clad hills,
Where once this long-lost waif had stood,
Then sombre with late autumn's chills,
Ere Winter's word had stilled each flood.
We thought how, in some dockyard's bound,
The new ship's mast was deftly stept,
And how, 'mid acclamative sound,
The vessel to the water leapt;
And how the helmsman sadly turned
The ship's head from the Polar Star
To where strange constellations burned
O'er lands from his loved home afar.
And how the stout ship stood the shock,
Perchance, of many a raging gale,
Till on some fatal shaft of rock,
She perished, 'mid the water's wail.
"Dear one," she said, "in future time,
When you and I are fast asleep;
Some waif of ours, perchance this rhyme,
Time's waves upon Life's shore may keep.
"And lovers in their lives' sweet spring
Will read their story in our own,
And feel, as from a sea-bird's wing,
Light teardrops on their eyelids blown.
"When they, content, have lulled their bliss
To slumber light with painless sighs,
Before they wake it with a kiss,
They'll scan our thought with chastened eyes;
"And e'en as this dead thing hath power
To lift from us Time's fallen veil,
Our Song, like some dim book-pressed flower,
Will Life's lost perfume new exhale."
THE NAHOON.
Where the breath of the ocean encumbers
The air with its languorous balm,
And weaves o'er the forest that slumbers
The spell of its health-giving calm;
There the spirit of Peace hath its dwelling,
And, rich round the wanderer's feet,
In the groves where clear waters are welling,
The dream-fragrant lotus blooms sweet.
The lagoon like a scimitar gleaming
In the conqueror ocean's strong hand,
Pierces through the bright hills that, a-dreaming,
Through seasons and centuries stand;
Whilst the tide, with its message of greeting,
Sweeps up from the surf to the rills,
And the murmurous joy of their meeting
The valley with melody fills.
Here each season, like spring, is a revel
Of flower and sunshine and song,
And leads to the banquet its novel
Delights in a wildering throng;
As a pageant of beauty, with guerdon
Of richness to spirit and sense,
Come the days bearing hither their burden
Of sweets for the hours to dispense.
Down rocks that the lichen makes hoary,
The garlanded tendril-blooms trail
To the woods where the wing of the lory
The scarlet geranium strikes pale;
O'er the aloe the honey-birds quiver
Like emeralds, feathered with flame,
While the kingfisher's plunge sends a shiver
Of light through the depths of the stream.
Sweet orchids, in shadow reposing,
Sigh scents on the path of the bee;
Bright lilies in splendour enclosing,
Woo butterflies over the lea;
Soft moss, for a dryad fit pillow,
Droops thick over tree-trunk and stone
In the depths of each fern-brimming hollow,
Where the moistening sea's breath is blown.
O'er a league of fair woodland and meadow,
Rich in flower and grass and soft fern,
Where the antelope couches in shadow,
And the curlew pipes over the tarn,
Lie the infinite waters of wonder,
Man's terror and scourge and delight—
That rave with the tempest in thunder,
Or laugh like a child in the light.
Here the silence at midnight is shattered
By the cry of the breakers in pain,
When the strength of their legion is scattered,
And their might is as curbed with a chain;
Here the snowstorms of foam, fierce as fire,
Shine bright 'neath the stars that they hide,
When the resonant surges retire
From the rock that their rage hath defied.
Yet the heart that is weary of beating
Finds here from its fever surcease,
And grief of compassion finds greeting
Where the war-song of waters is peace;
Where the roar of the strife-smitten world
Is drowned in the chant of the sea,
Lo! the banner of peace is unfurled,
And the soul in its thraldom is free.
THE BUSHMAN'S CAVE.
I stand behind the waterfall
That downward shoots, till spent in spray,
It clinging clasps the rocky wall
That beetles o'er the river way;
A secret cave is here fast hid
In swathing bands of forest dense,
A casket with a rocky lid,
Within the stream's circumference.
'Tis here the vanished bushman dwelt—
He, with his brood, long years ago—
Beneath this ledge; and deftly spelt,
In pictures that still freshly glow,
The wild-wood creatures, not more wild
Than he, who, hiding thus apart,
His idle days and hours beguiled
At his strange, harmless limning art.
Here human creatures hoped and loved,
And feared and hated in their turn—
Rejoiced when fortune kindly proved,
And over life's despites did mourn;
Here women nursed their babes, here maids
Oft listened to their lovers rude;
Here death has thrown a deeper shade
Of darkness o'er the gloomy wood.
There, in yon cleft, is still the mark
Of bygone fires whose flames are dead
As those who lit them—life's strange spark
And glowing ember, each has sped.
And by the south wind's gentle sigh
The flickering, sunlit leaves are turned,
And from the cliffs the brown hawks cry
To-day, as when each brightly burned.
Through fancy's glass I see around
The shades of long-dead forms arisen;
They move and breathe without a sound,
And live in their brief poet-season;
There lie their bows, their arrows keen,
Whilst on the fire an earthen pot
Holds, simmering slowly, foul and green,
The arrow-poison's fœtid clot.
There lies an antelope, fresh killed,
By hungry stomachs close surrounded,
And there's a wicker-basket filled
With luscious locusts, freshly pounded;
And look, the glowing coals upon,
A scaly snake is quickly toasting,
Whilst on that ledge, there in the sun,
The hunters of their deeds are boasting.
'Tis gone; 'twas but a glimpse, a flash,
That for an instant lit the past;
I see now but the water dash
In quivering spray-sheets downward cast,
And on the rocks, in deathless hue,
The records of a perished race
That from this land of ours withdrew
In silence, leaving scarce a trace.
Poor waifs upon creation's skirts,
Your melancholy history,
To men of earnest mind, asserts
A problem, and a mystery:
Whence came ye? Wherefore did ye live
To wither from the sphere of being—
And why did Nature to ye give
No ears to hear, nor eyes for seeing?—
The music and the light whereby
All men must walk, to guide your steps
Along life's path beneath the sky,
Between the snaring pitfall deeps;
Ye sank from something higher far,
And, distanced in life's struggling race,
Your last and failing remnants are
Erased from off the great world's face.
'NKONGANE.
Old—some eighty, or thereabouts;
Sly as a badger alert for honey;
Honest perhaps—but I have my doubts—
With an eye that snaps at the chink of money;
Poor old barbarian, your Christian veneer
Is thin and cracked, and the core inside
Is heathen and natural. Quaint and queer
Is your aspect, and yet, withal, dignified.
When your lips unlock to the taste of rum,
The tongue runs on with its cackle of clicks—
That, like bubbles, break as their consonants come,
For your speech is a brook full of frisky tricks.
You love to recall the days of old—
That are sweet to us all, for the alchemist Time
Strangely touches the basest of metals to gold,
And to-day's jangled peal wakes to-morrow's rich chime.
But not the past in a moony haze,
That shines for us sons of Europe, is yours—
You glow with the ardour of blood-stained days
And deeds long past—you were one of the doers—
Of spears washed red in the blood of foes,
Of villages wrapped in red flame, of fields
Where the vultures gorged, of the deadly close
Of the impi's horns, and the thundering shields.
Strangle old man—like a lonely hawk
In a leafless forest that falls to the axe,
You linger on; and you love to talk,
Yet your tongue full often a listener lacks.
Truth and fiction, like chaff and grain,
You mix together; and often I try
To sift the one from the other, and gain
The fact from its shell of garrulous lie.
You were young when Chaka, the scourge of man,
Swept over the land like the Angel of Death;
You marched in the rear, when the veteran van
Mowed down the armies—reapers of wrath!
You sat on the ground in the crescent, and laid
Your shield down flat when Dingaan spake loud—
His vitals pierced by the murderer's blade—
To his warriors fierce, in dread anguish bowed.
And now to this: to cringe for a shilling,
To skulk round the mission-house, hungry and lone;
To carry food to the women tilling
The fields of maize! For ever have flown
The days of the spear that the rust has eaten,
The days of the ploughshare suit you not;
Time hath no gift that your life can sweeten,
A living death is your piteous lot.
THE CATTLE THIEF.
I rise from my bed
When the moon is dead,
And hidden is every star;
When the white man sleeps,
And the tired hound
No vigil keeps,
But, in slumber sound,
Follows the chase afar.
I swiftly glide
Down the dark hillside,
And creep to the farmer's kraal,
Where the sleek-limbed kine,
With breath so sweet,
That will soon be mine,
In my bush retreat,
Wake at my soft, low call.
We quickly pass
O'er the dew-wet grass,
For my whistle they tamely follow;
Over hill and dale
We hurry apace,
For the morning pale
Will bring the chase
On our track down the bushy hollow.
No rest we know,
For we hurrying go
To our forest sanctuary,
Through thickets dense
Where the bush-buck lies,
Beneath krantzes whence
The leopard's eyes
Look down for his morning quarry.
My home is far,
And the morning star
Rose twice on our hither track;
Where the wide Bashee
From Baziya's side
Rolls toward the sea,
My kinsmen bide,
And they watch for my coming back.
For I wooed a maid,
But her father said,
Ere his daughter I might marry,
Five heifers fair,
And oxen five,
I must homeward bear;
So for love I strive,
For I could no longer tarry.
Of all the maids
That hoe in our glades,
Noniese is the trimmest one;
She's lithe as a snake,
As a partridge brown;
And I crouch in the brake
Ere the sun goes down,
Till she pass when her work is done.
In three days more,
To her father's door—
If I 'scape the keen pursuit—
I'll come with the spoil,
And I'll tell my dear
Of the danger and toil,
And she'll tremblingly hear,
Whilst her eyes shine comfort mute.
NAMAQUALAND.
A land of deathful sleep, where fitful dreams
Of hurrying spring scarce wake swift fading flowers;
A land of fleckless sky, and sheer-shed beams
Of sun and stars through day's and dark’s slow hours,
A land where sand has choked once fluent streams—
Where grassless plains lie girt by granite towers
That fright the swift and heaven-nurtured teams
Of winds that bear afar the sea-gleaned showers.
The wild Atlantic, fretted by the breath
Of fiery gales o’er leagues of desert sped,
Rolls back, and wreaks in surf its thunderous wrath
On rocks that down the wan, wide shore are spread;
The waves for ever roar a song of death,
The shore they roar to is for ever dead.
THE SUMMER-HOUSE.
I built my love a resting bower
Within a glade where forest trees
Stretched o'er the sward their budding boughs,
That chafed and mingled in the breeze.
And wild wood flowers, strange and bright,
Devised in nature's mystic mood,
Around the arbour trellis twined,
And quaintly draped the sombre wood.
Rich butterflies in ceaseless dance
Threaded the blossom-bordered gloom,
And singing bees in summer-time
Rifled each honey-laden bloom.
From here we'd see the timid dawn
Glance shyly from the eastern sky;
Or, in the west, the cloud-built pyre
Flame with the morrow's prophecy.
And oft we'd sit in sultry noons,
When throbbing nature sank to sleep,
And read the lore in love-lit eyes,
Of secrets rare that lovers keep.
Strange living things that underground
In secret places keep their home,
And fangless serpents, void of hurt,
Would to her gentle presence come.
She faded, but I saw it not—
How could I, when the love-plumed wings
That sped the swift hours dimmed my eyes,
And closed my ears to passing things?
I knew her love was fadeless—knew
That mine could die not, nor could deem
That love was life's alone, and life
A dream, and love an inner dream.
She faded, and it seemed her life
Passed to the blossom-burthened sprays;
The orchid seemed instinct with sense,
The lily tried to breathe and gaze.
She died when summer's failing light
Slid into autumn's golden gloom,
And when my hopes like faded leaves
Sank dead, they laid her in the tomb.
And now, when springtime wakes the world,
I watch each slowly opening flower
That, from the silence where she dwells,
Comes with fresh tidings to her bower.
SONG OF THE SEASONS.
What says the antelope,
Couched in the fern?
Winter is cold,
When will springtime return?
Moist wind from the sea, set the fountains all flowing,
Hie hitherward, Spring, set the wild flowers blowing.
What says the snake,
As he creeps from the shadow?
Summer bides far,
Spring is cold in the meadow.
Sun, climb aloft, slanted beams quicken slowly;
Sheer shed, they warm both the high and the lowly.
What says the lory,
Hoarse from the spray?
Autumn brings fruit,
It is summer alway.
Droop, flowers vain, for your mission is ended,
To bear the seed babes was your beauty intended.
What says the world?
Winter's my rest;
After a revel
Slumber is best.
Sigh, sad south wind, o'er the wild ocean faring,
From ice fields afar your white frost burthen bearing.
SLEEP'S THRESHOLD.
What gauzy shapes of shadow wind
Across the soul's husht meadow-plain,
In forms that fade and glow again,
When sleep first dawns upon the mind.
Like light-limbed antelopes, that skim
Across the wide and waste Karoo,
In changing combinations new
Their mingling masses hover dim.
They float and flit in wizard ways,
Above, below, and in, and out,
A reckless-ranging, lissom rout,
That takes no heed of roads nor days.
They are not thralls of space nor time,
These dwellers on the skirts of death;
They tread not earth, they breathe not breath,
Their homes are not of earthly clime.
Their tresses float on airless breeze,
Their raiment hath not woof nor warp,
Their music as a soundless harp
No sense may soothe nor ear appease.
The shadows, they of undreamt dreams,
The wraiths of buried hopes and fears,
The vapour fumed from fallen tears,
The masks of what is not, yet seems.
Like moths and butterflies they rise
From secret cells of waking thought,
And see strange light and come to naught,
And vanish swiftly, dewdrop-wise.
And no man knoweth where they keep
Their revels strange in waking hours;
They fleet like summer-smitten flowers,
When eyelids feel the kiss of sleep.
SONG.
A red rose hung on a green rose-tree,
And the summer winds were blowing;
It grew where a streamlet babbled free,
'Tween mossy rocks swift flowing.
A humble bee sought the rose's heart,
While the summer winds were blowing;
And the red rose petals he rent apart
For the pollen, yellow glowing.
A preying bird seized the hapless bee,
While the summer winds were blowing;
And upon a spine of a thorny tree
Hung him high, in the sunlight showing.
A hawk swooped out of the sunlit sky,
While the summer winds were blowing,
And bore the bird to the eyrie high,
Where its hungry young were cawing.
SONNET.
I leant my breast against the golden gate
That bars the body from the land of dreams,
But lets the soul to roam in lawns where wait
Or wander down the banks of shining streams
The dead and living, holding strange debate
Of things that yet should happen 'neath the beams
Of suns as yet unrisen, whilst listless Fate
Paused, and the stars unyoked their tired teams.
And as my hand the latch sought, for I fain
Had followed one who wore a white rose-wreath,
Sleep touched mine eyes with darkness, and the pain
Of longing ceased; and when I next drew breath
I heard a voice low whisper, "It is vain
To enter here—thou first must drink of death!"
GOOD AND EVIL.
Methought I saw an angel on the sun
Sit throned, whilst around the planets swayed,
Each with its guiding spirit, that obeyed
In duteous wise that lofty-visaged one;
But on this earth it seemed two spirits fought
A deadly combat, struggling hand to hand—
The Good and Evil, over sea and land
Locked in a strife with dreadful issues fraught.
For as the calm-eyed ruler of each sphere
Bore slowly past the battle-riven world,
Firm in his mighty hand he held a spear
Poised o'er his head, and ready to be hurled—
To dash this globe to fragments as it whirled,
Should evil's brow the wreath of victory wear.
TWO GRAVES.
(DR. LIVINGSTONE'S AND HIS WIFE'S.)
i.
The one lies low beneath a tropic sun,
Where huge Zambesi—spent and tired of rage,
And silent after roarings, and the leap
From heights, the wonder of the world,—slow glides,
And presses ocean backward in his strength.
It holds the dust of what was once a woman,
A woman who from distant Scotland came
To help her hero-husband to maintain,—
As errant knight of God, in foremost rank,—
The peaceful war of love, and truth, and light.
Against the hordes of darkness, hate and death,
She came; and three short months had scarcely gone
When fiery fever held her in his grip;
Then death came, and from ruined body drew
The faithful soul, and rendered it to God.
No woman's hand was there to flicker cool,
And drop its balmful touches on her brow;
No thought of piteous comfort might she take,
That in some holy spot amongst the tombs
That held her kindred's ashes, hers would be
A shrine for love's devotion to adorn.
Alas! she knew that he whose hot tears fell
Upon her dying face, ay, even he,
Her husband, might not linger by her grave,
But, by the trumpet tones of duty called,
Must hasten onward, even to his death.
ii.
Within the lofty fane where sacred dust
Of heroes, saints, and singers lie in state,
His bones are laid. He died upon his knees,
Alone, and far from sympathy of man,
His head upon his buckler Bible laid;
Weary and spent, he answered to the call
When God said to his servant, "Come and rest."
And faithful hands then bore his body far
O'er swamp and desert-sand unto the sea;
And Heaven's winds swift wafted it across
The sea-fields to the far sea-girdled isle
Whose son he was; and Britain, with one voice
Of reverent mourning, voted him her first
And highest honour, and with sad acclaim
Bestowed a seat in the high pantheon
Of famed Westminster.
iii.
Though their dust apart
Is separated by the Lybian waste
That stretches from the Mountains of the Moon
To where old Atlas stands and tells the sky
The secrets of the desert and the lore
Of his wild daughter Ocean; tho' the curve
Of the great world's strong shoulder swells between;
Yet sure they are together.