A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/Anonymous (2)
TO YOUNG SOUTH AFRICA.
Lo! a dream-shape in the distance beckoning on to nobler deeds:
Up, my brethren, rise and follow where the star-wreathed vision leads;
Leave your toil of fruitless labour, vainly with o'er wearied hands
Weaving aye your web of fortune from the dull earth's yellow sands,
Striving with your lofty talents to enslave yourselves to clay,
Chaining spirits born for ages to the task-work of a day.
Toil!—but not for wasteful nothings; toil!—but not for self alone;
This it is "for ever rolling upwards still the rolling stone";
This it is the curse of Eden, still bequeathed from man to man:
"Strive but vainly,—work and gain not," echoing aye the angel's ban.
Yet upon this curse a blessing when the god-like human will
Moulds it unto glorious purpose, and doth hallow all the ill!
Never sainted prophet stricken prostrate on the burning sod,
Trembling 'neath the awful glory streaming from the present God,
Heard in earthquake, flame, or stillness, aught more holy than the truth
Echoed by our mother Nature from her dawn of early youth
Through all ages—"Man is God-like—weak and erring, suffering man,—
God-like in the thoughts he thinketh, God-like in the deeds he can."
Yea! and with the curse upon him, more he proves his lofty birth
Than in yon old Eden dwelling, sated with the ease of earth,
When he strives for men around him, battles for his brother's right;
When he spreads amid the darkness rays of never-dying light—
Rays that calmly shining from him reach the weary sufferer's breast,
Warm once more the frozen feelings, bringing ease to his unrest;
Rays whose widely-beaming brilliance shows all men one brotherhood,
Man then only rightly human when he yearns for human good.
Mighty nations then most glorious when their world-wide cherished name
Is a succour to the helpless,—unto tyrants fear and shame!
When their deeds have been of justice, mercies done and wisdom spread,
Waking noble aspirations where the human soul seemed dead;
God-like then is human labour: brethren rend'ring brethren blest,
Feel themselves divinely nurtured, know a God within their breast.
Yet,—for ye have erred, my brethren,—ye have scorned the blessed gift,
Wearying strength that is immortal in the selfish race of thrift;
Lo! your dead religion's priesthood onward with your earth-god reels!
Earthward, sacrificial victims! Stain with blood the chariot-wheels!
Perish there; your work is ended, as your sordid work ye chose,
Death, corruption, base oblivion, guerdon of your toils and throes:
Worse yet than the senseless sluggard who his talent laid in earth,
Thus to lower to dishonour all that proves man's primal worth.
Veiling as a thing forgotten, hid from you in Nature's tome,
This, as the broad sunlight blazing—"Elsewhere is your spirit's home"—
Darkening the glorious vision which all men have felt in youth,
Of majestic human grandeur blended quite with God-like youth.
Who shall blush not, O my brethren, naming this his fatherland,
Where no noble thoughts have been, where no noble deed is plann'd?
Nay, but earthworms wriggling onwards crawl unto a heap of gold,
And an instant altar rises and a craven prayer is told.
Lo! three centuries have vanished since the pennon was unfurled
Wafting wisdom from the fountains welling in the ancient world;
Since the sacred Cross was planted at the baptism of our land,
That it may enjoy communion with the Christian nation's band.
Christians came; and shrunk the savage from his father's old abode,
For he knew no more the tenure on which earth is held from God;
Dwelling 'mid the brutes around him, scarce himself a nobler brute,
All high thoughts of human greatness from his breast torn by the root.
Then came men, our pilgrim fathers, noblest blood of sunny France—
Broad-browed men of free-born spirit, lighted with the eagle glance;
Spoiled by bigot priest and despot of the broad lands of their line,
Rich yet in the glorious freedom that dares know itself divine:
Hither came they—welcomed hither by the gallant Northern race
Whom they well might own for brethren, breast to breast in close embrace—
Those staunch darers of the waters who first broke the giant force
That would rule man's free convictions as the rider guides his horse;
Struggling and despairing never, till at length they gained the war—
Spain, the hope of priest-led tyrants; Holland, freedom's polar star.
Lo! such union of such nations! Gaze into the future's scope,
Not in vain name these their country land of soul-exalting hope!
Knowledge see they ever widening, man no longer scorning man;
Truth diffusing each to other, aiding the Creator's plan;
Breaking free from earthly fetters, giant souls of thoughtful men,
Meeting wisdom in their equals far beyond their former ken,
Wisdom which they erst deemed falsehood, hated with the hate of hell,
When their minds were cramped within them, shrunk in earth-pride's narrow shell.
Better were it had old ocean swept the wave-tossed ships away,
Than that from such large-souled fathers sprang the pigmies of to-day;
Stalking lords of all around us, blinded with our petty pride,
Higher, maybe, than the savage whom we scoff at and deride.
Where the deeds that we can point to worthy of our father's name?
Where the single gleam of glory in the darkness of our shame?
Where the broad and furrowed foreheads, watchers for all human kind,
Radiant with the thoughtful paleness, signal of the earnest mind?
MARGUERITE.[1]
Born of the moonlight, cradled in foam,
Deep beneath Oman's waters
A pearl lay nestled within its home;
Where the laughter of the sea-nymph's daughters
Came ringing along through the rock-roofed caves
Which they made their gladsome dwelling,
And shivered the crests of the wind-swept waves
That over their heads were swelling.
Down where the twilight is misty and green,
Where the gold sands cradle the amber,
Where the richest gems of the main are seen
And the snaky sea-weeds clamber;
Where the sea-shells sing the songs they caught
When they roved on the seething billow,
Ere they laid them down, like a solemn thought,
To serve for the Peri's pillow;
Close lay the pearl within its shell
Till the hand of the diver caught it,
And, tearing it forth from its natal cell,
To the glare of the daylight brought it.
Snatched from the home of its magic birth,
While the waters sobbed their sadness,
The song of the Peris rose to earth
From their happy homes of gladness:—
"Child of the ocean, we Peris shall miss thee,
Gone from the cleft where thou usedst to hide;
Never again shall the sea-weed kiss thee,
As it lazily swing's in the murmuring tide;
Never again, O child of the ocean,
Shall the song of the conches lull thee to rest,
As softly moving in dreamy motion
We rocked thee to sleep on our snowy breast.
But our wishes shall follow wherever thou goest,
Though far over mountain and sea thou should'st roam,
And, whate'er in thy new life befalls thee, thou knowest
We remember thee still in thy ocean home."
So it wandered through many a land
From its ocean depths of azure;
Lingering now by some tropic strand,
Now borne beside the glacier;
Ever ablaze with the beauty's light
Which its wondrous birth had given,—
One had deemed it a seraph's tear-drop bright,
If the angels weep in heaven.
But at length it reached the long-sought rest
For which it had wandered far,
When I placed it upon my darling's breast,
Where it shone like the morning star;
And yet, for all it gleamed so bright
As it lay in her bosom fair,
It blushed to find itself less white,
And glowed a ruby there.
- ↑ Precious Pearl.