A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/J. R.
VASCO DA GAMA.
(CHRISTMAS, 1497.)[1]
They were sick at heart and weary, they were tired of wind and wave,
They saw no beauty in the sea, it seemed to them their grave;
Two moons had grown and gone again since they had looked their last
Upon the mount whose beetling brow braves the Antarctic blast;
Morn after morn had found them still one speck upon the sea,
Eve after eve had left them yet all landless on the lee:
And ever as the day arrived more sad, and stern, and strange
The ocean seemed to be to them; it bore no other change.
And ever as the night came more lonely, lost, and drear
Those seamen felt, as northward, ho! their course they strove to steer.
For all that those old mariners around them heard or saw
Seemed more and more from olden things their present life to draw—
New stars that bore no meaning; new birds with mournful cries—
The very brine, so deep and dark, was foreign to their eyes;
While as the days and weeks flew on, and seasons came and went,
Alone on that untravelled sea the snail-like hours were spent.
No wand'rer o'er an austral wild, no desert-planted palm,
Could more completely be possessed of isolation's charm;
For on the vacant surges of that great southern deep
None but this band of voyagers fell on Christmas-Eve asleep.
Oh! ye that now in giant barks o'er subject oceans speed,
Give to the men that dared them first their peril-purchased meed.
Oh! ye to whom in later times the sea brings few scant fears,
Honour as best befits their fame those staunch old pioneers.
They had left remote behind them—like a memory growing dim,
The shores of Spain—imperial Spain—power, great, and proud, and grim.
They had seen, discreetly distant, the false Moor's gloomy realm,
While with a sign devout they guarded well the willing helm;
And many tales of torture and of death were that night told
By men whose hearts beat hotly with the hates they learnt of old.
Then as the sun rose higher, during many a long, long day,
They crawled along a coast that never tempted them to stay,—
Where sandy shores lay bleaching, stark, beneath a fervid sky;
Where burnished seas, unruffled, but racked the aching eye;
Where rivers, wide and torpid, crept through banks of forest gloom,
And breathed across the tainted beach the vapours of the tomb;
Where, under Palma's lofty steep, the rock-thrown shadows rest;
Or where Biafra's friendly bight bends to the mystic west;
All down those links of sullen capes; all down that stricken strand,
Where Nature stood with callous front and man with hostile hand;
With bodies never weary, and with spirits never faint,
They sped all trustful in the care of Heaven and guardian saint.
Oh! how these sailors' simple hearts with pious hope beat high
When first they saw the sacred Cross hung in the southern sky;
And soon the gladdening tidings had leapt from lip to lip,
That Heaven itself was smiling on the devious voyaging ship.
Deep was the joy that crowned their hopes when high above them reared,
Wreathed in its folded films of fog, the mountain bold and weird;
The mountain under whose bleak brow the great seas bask or break,
And round whose rock-built basements now vast fleets their courses take;
Nor was the Christmas-tide far off when they again set sail,
Bent still, the good Lord helping them, the Indian coast to hail.
Rounding the sea-girt Cape, whose crest rose high above the mast;
Rounding L'Agulhas' sandy point, seen from the mast at last;
Keeping all closely to the shore, for fear of surge and tide,
The little bark clung to her course, that cruel coast beside.
She passed the gaping cliffs through which the Knysna's waters flow,
And swung secure in sheltered coves when southern gales did blow.
Yon yawning bay whose leafless shore was then all bleak and bare,
Whose busy waters now are thronged by ships that gather there,—
At last behind them passed from sight, and then for days and weeks,
Driven far out by baffling winds, fighting with stubborn leaks,
They tossed, the prey of bitter storm, from ruthless wave to wave,
They strove with slowly deepening gloom their sinking ship to save,
Till in the depth of mute despair they knelt upon the deck,
And prayed that Jesu—Mary's son—would keep their lives from wreck.
They prayed, and as their souls thus spoke, hope in their bosoms rose,
And many a weary eye that night in sleep could calmly close.
A flush upon yon eastern sky where glows the Magi's star,
A bank of blackness looming large, as land that heaves afar,
Through throbbing hearts a sudden thrill, that quickens as the morn
Breaks with its summer glory on the day when Christ was born.
Oh! joy to our long weary hearts; oh! hopes of getting home,
Oh! goodly sun, and kindly sea, and tender sky, God's dome,
Oh! land, whose pleasant lineaments, to these our dazzled eyes,
Are glorious as were Canaan's heights to Israel's thankful spies.
Softly the bush-swathed shore arose in backward sloping hills,
Whose swarthy sides hid rushing streams or bent to rippling rills.
Softly those serried bluffs disclosed deep valleys winding far,
'Mid gloom of tufted woodland, or stern frown of naked scar.
Softly the mottled heights upsprung in ever-rising tiers,
Whose rifted marge far westward seen in distance disappears.
Well might those simple-hearted men, as towards the coast they drew,
With pious unction bless the land thus bursting on their view.
Well might they say that surely 'twas God's purpose true and kind,
That they upon great Jesu's Day this brave new land should find.
- ↑ Port Natal was discovered by the great navigator, Vasco da Gama, on Christmas Day 1497, and was accordingly named by him "The Land of the Nativity."