Page:A Treasury of South African Poetry.djvu/196

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
170
WILLIAM RODGER THOMSON.

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

There is a land unknown to fame,
A land whose heroes have no name
In the grey records of past age;
Unchronicled in hist'ry's page,
Untamed by art, yet wild and free.
That land lies in the southern sea,
It laughs to heav'n which smiles on it;
There midway in wild waters set,
With suns serene and balmier breeze
Than ever swept these northern seas,
Its beetling crags rise vast, and war
With oceans, meeting from afar,
To break their billows on its shore
With fearful, never-ending roar.

Bold mariners who sailed of old
Through unknown seas in search of gold,
Saw those dark rocks, those giant forms,
And, fear-quelled, named them "Cape of Storms!"
O land of storms, I pine to hear
That music which made others fear;
I long to see thy storm-fiend scowl,
I long to hear the fierce winds howl,
Hot with fell fires across thy plains.

Thou glorious land! where Nature reigns
Supreme in awful loveliness.