'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.
