The rolling wheels are still; the trek is done.
No more the trekkers in the dawn-light blue
Ride through the great grey plains of the Karroo,
Where each drab koppie, dazed by the rising sun,
For a few tingling moments throbs and glows
With the red lightnings of a bursting rose:
No more in days of drought will they turn grave eyes
And prayerful lips toward the brazen skies;
The strong sun shall not smite them with his blaze,
Nor the elvish moon enchant with foam-shot rays;
Swift storms shall bellow and crash by, unheard;
Nor will the dew-song of some hidden bird
Wake them to wonder at a world new-born.
No more will they inspan in the flush of morn
To toil across the never-ending veld,
Or over some vast, rock-spiked mountain-belt
To haul their magic wagons. Nevermore
At daybreak will they trace the fading spoor
Of buck or beast; nor will the lion's roar
Or leopard's snarl shatter their midnight sleep.
No more on galloping horses will they sweep
Over harsh plains chasing the buffalo,
Blesbok and eland, nor will their bullets bring low
The wing-foot springbok's leaping loveliness.
No more the clang of battle and the stress
Of hurtling assegai and hovering death
Stirs their brave hearts or quickens their still breath.
No more when dusk comes with the whirring bat
They'll gather for the camp-fire's song and chat;
And when sad night binds up day's burning scars
They'll dream no more beneath a tent of stars.


Not marble monuments engraved with gold
Would the great Voortrekkers — men wise as bold —
Ask as memorial: rather would they
Charge us, in memory of them, from day to day
To guard the honour and the sacred dust
Of this our Homeland, given to us in trust,
This Land now blest, now blasted, by the sun,
Where, with so much to do, so little's done.

They would that we, scorning soft ease, should toil
With brain and hand to save our precious soil
From rape of raiding floods that ruthlessly
Carry its riches to the sterile sea —
From slow, unheeded hosts of noxious weed
That, grimly creeping on from year to year,
Render vast regions barren to the need
Of man and beast — from locust-swarms that rust
The shining sky and fall like wind-blown dust
On glad green fields, leaving them brown and bare
And joyless as a scorched Saharan plain.
They would that we should capture and enchain
The sudden floods of devastating rain,
That sweep across our cracked and blistered earth,
And storing them should save from torturing dearth
Our thirst-racked land — starring the broad Karroo
With flashing lakes of water sweet as dew.

They would that we should help our brothers too,
Who, pressed by powers of drought, disease and blight,
Strove through long years, but worsted in the fight
Have fallen to paralysing poverty —
Bedfellow of despair, harsh as the sea
And cheerless as the blank Siberian snows.
They would that we should raise and 'stablish those
Who by the spell, stronger than Circe's wine,
Of sorcerer-suns that with fierce beauty shine
Have been debased and drugged to vile repose,
Sapped of vitality, quenched of the gleam
Of saving hope, blinded to beauty's dream.

They would that we should be both kind and just
To the Dark Man, who is to us a trust
And not a " burden"; nor in turn should we
A load upon his toil-bent shoulders be,
But give him light and opportunity,
Spur him with hope and speed him with goodwill.
ThaThe may struggle up the painful hill
Of progress, and with head and heart and hand
Stand forth a worthier son of his ancestral land.