A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/Rev. A. Vine Hall
AT KALK BAY.
Asleep! now dreams the curly head
Of all the treasures I outspread
Upon the shore—queer ocean things:
Blue men-of-war, all strings and stings;
An octopus; two prickly green
And swollen fish, aburst with spleen.
To bring them home, thine only care;
Of odour fearsome, nursemaid's glare,
Oblivious. Sobbing in thy sleep!
I, the stern father, come to peep,
Kiss thee, and place this new-bought toy
There—in the bucket—morning's joy!
When life's night cometh will the store
That I have gathered strew the shore?
Is what we rescue from the wave
So priceless—worth our while to save?
Does he whose bucket on the sand
Is emptied by the Father's hand
Lose aught? Kindly is God's contempt
For man's upgatherings. If exempt
From heritage of failing powers,
No richer than in heavenly bowers,
A day of healthful toil they gain,
Not what the bucket may contain.
THOMAS PRINGLE.
(poet and reformer.)
With glory of poetic light
The century dawned whose night
Is deepening around us. Joyful rang
The earth when all those morning stars together sang.
Our Ocean-Mother gave to us
One, not least luminous,—
Pringle, the poet of the parched Karoo.
From thraldom of the "glittering eye" his music drew
Coleridge, who loved its magic well;
E'en Scott beneath it fell,
Forgetful of the Gael and Saxon feud
While listening to that weird romance of solitude.
A fighter thou, with never time
To build the deathless rhyme;
Thine the flung gauntlet of a righteous hate,
And thine a flower of song to lone ways consecrate.
Thou singest; we behold the band
Of exiles leave their land:
The fair dear hills of Scotland fade away
For ever! eyes unused to weeping weep that day.
But hallowed page, and David's lyre,
And thine their hearts inspire.
And now they tread the hot and barren shore;
And now, by floods bereft of all their humble store.
Thy pen it is that wins relief.
But soon they lose their chief—
The conquest of the desert has begun,
And a far fiercer fight must by his blade be won:
The battle of the Press. Full sore
The rain of blows he bore!
Fainting with wounds he quits the well-fought field,
But not before the shout telling the foemen yield.
And yet again with gleaming brand,
One of a hero-band,
The world beholds him: on Oppression's grave
His hand doth plant the Hag that frees the trembling slave.
Hard seems the fate that once again
Forbids the knight to drain
The cup, to feast and grace the board with song,—
Death beckons him: he glides from that illustrious throng.
Then Calumny, once timorous-tame,
Grew bold and, crawling, came,
With the vile brood that haunts her loathsome cave;
They gibber round and spill their venom on his grave.
"Therefore his life was failure!" say
Those who but count the pay.
Fools even thus: from the world's poor renown
God ever saveth some for His own hand to crown.
Pringle, we love thy hate of wrong,
Thy simple, heart-felt song!
A knightly soul, unbought, and unafraid;
This country oweth much to thy two-edged blade:
And when the crowds of meanly great
And sordidly elate
Are dust long since forgotten, Afric's page
Will boast thy name as now—a light from age to age.
THE SPIRIT OF THE SUMMIT.
"That path no bird of prey knoweth, neither hath the falcon's eye seen it."—Job.
Where the desperate grass to the precipice cling's,
Where the smoke of the torrent will moisten thy wings,
Past the caves in the crags where the Hurricanes hide,
Daring Adventurer, fearlessly ride.
Onward and upward defying the clouds,
Eluding the lean hands they stretch from their shrouds,
Joyously pass on thy pinions of might,
Seeking the golden pavilions of Light.
Is it love so emboldens—the limitless blue
To voyage, companionless, eager to woo
The Goddess of Fire from her home in the sun,
Heedless of where the round Earth may have spun?
Vainly I dream it! Thou never canst rise
Half of the distance that Fantasy flies,
Glancing not back till from planets afar
Earth glimmers faintly, a vanishing star!
Plumage of gold in the westering glow;
Thoughts upon rapine and slaughter below;
Of thy blood-sprinkled eyrie bethink thee and fly,
Ere Darkness shall chase thee in rage from the sky.
Poor Spirit, alas! that my spirit should be
In strength and in feebleness kindred to thee!
Now rising exultant on pinions of fire,
Now falling and falling, down, down to the mire.
Yea, pity thou me, for not thine the keen pain
Of wings that to reach to the Ultimate, strain:
Thou, happy to sail over mountainous dust;
I, to the Uttermost, longing to thrust
Through showering stars, like adventurous prow
Of some boat of the Ancients, until on the brow
Of ocean there gleam the gold circlet of sand,
And the keel rushes up on Creation's last strand.
Oh! why am I tortured while watching thy course?
Why the fierce longing? and why the remorse?
Ah! why the remorse? O'er the purple ravine
I see thee ascending by pathways unseen,
Nor feel a reproach for not striving to scale
By footholds of sapphire: then why that I fail
To advance by the more inaccessible way
Of sun-sprinkled Space to the Gates of the Day?
O Desire! art thou prophet or friend? Wherefore stand
Solemnly pointing with eloquent hand
Mortals (whose feet are on burial sod!)
Up to the Infinite, up to a God?
A prophet I hail thee, and tremblingly cry—
"May we grasp a great Destiny—scaling the sky!"
What is remorse for the failure to-day
But the Voice of Omnipotence saying "Ye may!"
TWO DECEMBERS.
Now o'er the Homeland dear,
Winter hurls a glittering spear,
While all the furies of the Arctic night,
Following his icy car's impetuous flight,
Scream in demoniac mirth,
As down the blast
They stream, aghast
Stands the fair Earth:
In vain the bowing woods a trembling homage pay;
Groaning, they see their bright wealth whirled away;
He flies o'er the streams, they stiffen!—fields, and lo!
Fear petrifies the clods. But hearth-fires glow;
And through long evenings, round the blaze,
Happy children raise
Merry defiance of the blustering king
Whose pæans frenzied winds and deep-voiced surges sing.
Sweet is December 'neath the southern sun:—
The morning music of the wak'ning glade;
The fiery Noon and pine-woods' purple shade;
The timid twilight beautiful but fleet;
The star-eyed balmy night whose gentle feet
Disturb no dreaming flower, so light they pass,
Nor shake one diamond from the dewy grass.
Sweet is December 'neath the Southern sun,
The cloudless blue!
Yet envy not our brighter skies
(Ye who from the ancient Home
May not roam),
Soon smitten through
By shafts of glory, our world fainting lies,
Craving the storm ye fain would shun,
While yours, baptised with power,
Renews her strength and beauty: blessed dower
After brief trial hour!
And when the blossomed hawthorns throw
On emerald grass their showers of fragrant snow;
When lark, and thrush, and blackbird sing
All the splendour of the Spring,
All the miracle of the living,
And the nightingale's thanksgiving
Carries through the moonlit night
Every note of day's delight,
In so intense an ecstasy,
Such a rain
Of rapture as to mortal brain
Must needs appear akin to pain——
England! if now from every shore
Thy sons return in thought once more
To hear the Christmas-bells waken thy woodlands hoar,
What then shall be
Their passionate desire for thee—
To kiss thy daisy-sandalled feet,
And their undying love for thee and thine repeat!