Their long trek ended here: no more they'll roam
'Neath crawling suns that sting with scorpion-rays,
Witch-moons that weave still sorceries of foam:
They'll question irresponsive stars no more;
Nor watch the beacon-fires of sunset blaze
Defiance, while night's armies march secure
Over the terrain seized so oft before.

Follow in thought that doughty pilgrim band:
Their trek begins in misty northern places,
England's song-starred and legend-haunted land;
Poised between pain and hope in tears they stand
When loved shores fade, and then turn steadfast faces
And gaze across grey plains and purring foam,
Seeing in dream a sunlit southern home.

Three months they sail and then, sea-worn and weary,
They land within Algoa's cheerless bay—
A place of prowling sands, a prospect dreary:
Here, a new voyage begins: embarking now
In schooners of the veld they steer their way
O'er sandy tracts, through marshy swamps they plough,
And lumber on and on, they scarce know how:

The yoked ‘sixteens’ plod patiently along;
The long chains rattle and the jukskeis squeak;
The drivers urge their teams with curse or song,
The mountains echo to the crack of whip;
Boughs whirr against the sails, and in each creek
The wheels wake thunder, while tents sway and dip;
Thus waddles slowly on each tortoise-like veld-ship:

Onward through haggard gorges rough and deep,
Where stark hills rise, gigantic rock-ringed towers,
From waves of splintered stone: here shadows sleep,
Roused for a moment by the sun at noon:
No swift grass glimmers here, no swinging flowers:
From these bald hilltops the morose baboon
Grunts, and makes mouths at the encroaching moon:

Onward through vales where the euphorbia grim
Swarms in ungainly groves—trunks tall and straight,
Like pillars of still smoke livid and dim,
Crowned with repellent foliage foul and fat—
Jungles, where grisly shadows lie in wait;
Fitting retreat for ghoulish rite, for bat,
Hedgehog, hyena, goblin-eyed tree-cat:

Through wastes of straggling bush, of prickly-pear
On whose flat fleshy leaves the cruel spines
Lie like a mist; past squirming shapes of fear,
Twisted and leprous scrub and trailing vines
With spidery tentacles and poisonous grape,
Scaled cacti—lizard-like in hue and shape—
Most fitting weeds a murderer's tomb to drape.

Strange animals they see as they pass on,
Meerkat, muishond, gesticulating ape,
Dassies among the crags that seek the sun,
Fleet-footed antelope; and creeping things—
Curious chameleons with mouths agape,
Cobras with stars and adders in bright rings,
Boomslangs that fly from tree to tree sans wings.

And birds they see, the hook-beaked eagle bold;
Bald-headed vultures and the burnished sprew
With scarlet eyes; the oriole's swift gold;
Sunbirds festooning trees with rainbow-glory;
Hawks scribbling hieroglyphics in the blue:
Rainbirds with coral bills; the red-winged lory;
Tiny tinktinkies famed in nursery story.

And fearsome sounds they hear when it is dark,
The jackal spiralling his psalm of pain;
Trumpeting elephants, the wild-dog's bark;
The snarl of a leaping leopard when he kills
The quivering antelope that bleats in vain;
All these they hear, and with what quakes and thrills
They feel the lion's echo shake the sleeping hills.

Onward they fare o'er plains, barren and brown,
Where filmy heat-waves dance like flickering chaff,
From which at intervals with startled frown
Loom stone-topped hillocks—even as from the sea
Leap sudden isles. On such plains rough winds laugh,
Or romp and roar and build with boisterous glee
Temples and towers of dusty masonry.

Then undulating hills and valleys green,
Where flaming flowers kindle the kaffir-boom,
Dazzle their eyes. Among these vales serene
Many abide; but others wander on
Through gold-mimosa glades, until they come
Nigh to those huge blue beads which the hermit sun
Rises to finger when the night is done.

Soon they are scattered, soon like mists they melt,
Among the crinkled plains like ants they creep;
Lost in the homeless vastness of the veld,
They find themselves; strike root; the wild they star
With habitations; break its virgin sleep
With ploughshares, and with stubborn wastes they war
To make them bloom like England's fields afar.

They seam the trackless wild with many a road;
They sow the seed of cities and they rear
Temples wherein to praise and worship God;
They bridge brown streams; they toil like fervent bees;
They dig them wells; the bush and scrub they clear;
They sow and plant and soon their northern trees
Ruffle the plumage of the southern breeze.

Disasters come to shake their fortitude:
When golden promises their green fields yield,
Behold upon the sky's blue magnitude,
Great growths of russet beard!—strange clouds appear—
Legions of locusts fall upon each field
In irresistible flood, in deluge drear,
Leaving them desolated, blasted, bare.

Drought comes, persistent foe of their new land,
Blotting up rivers, as a scribe blots script
To make it clean and fair. By his fell hand
White-throated springs are throttled, robes are ripped
From sad, shamed trees: ‘Die, die,’ Drought whispereth,
And by the incantation of his breath,
All quick things crumble to the dust of death.

And oft—when rustling wheat-ears softly sway
Upon the wrinkled veld in golden haze,
When flocks and herds make glad the close of day
With rustic music—in the silent night
Dark-skinned marauders set the wheat ablaze,
Drive off all sheep and cattle, and morning light
Shows blackened fields, bare kraals to startled sight:

Drought, murrain, locust, devastating war,
Famine and flood fall on the pioneers,
Their patient hopes to blight, their peace to mar;
But with unconquerable fortitude—
As steadfast as the hills—through searing years
They face and fight all evils that intrude,
They toil and strive and pray in solitude.

Now, the last outspan won, in sleep they lie,
Earth-travel ended, leaving us the heirs
Of deeds that time's persistent teeth defy,
Thoughts—clearer eyes—that lend through dusty years
Transmitted radiance, powers that control
And guide the forward marches of the soul,
As moons that sway the reckless ocean's roll.


Separate, secluded, once this churchyard knelt
Far from the babblings of the village street;
A city has now risen from the veld
And shops and houses ring this still retreat:
But, come besieging life with all its jars
Of shrieking engines and of snorting cars,
The dead sleep on, impassive as the stars.

—Like cloud-shadows, pine-forests darkly dream
Upon the hills that round the city climb;
Within its precincts gracious gardens gleam
With flower and fountain, and lofty spires lime
The flying sunbeams; on wide streets the rhyme
Of footfall beats, and punctual tongues of time
Startle our musings with intruding chime.—
On this lone isle of sleep inviolate
White shells are strewn by life's unsleeping sea;
Here sombre cypresses stand round in state
Nursing the ache of darkness in their boughs:
Thus, we poor watchers draw in fear our breath
And nurse the ache of sad mortality—
That hidden wound which no surcease allows—
The dark foreboding of quick-coming death.

But though like sleepless mists we soon are gone,
Like roses, rainbows—forms that flame and melt,
Is there not in us something of the sun,
The moon, the anchored star, the voyaging planet,
The wind-racked ocean, and the sun-lashed veld—
Its patient plains, its angry peaks of granite—
Thought's quenchless flame and endless life to fan it?

The sun goes down with golden banners flying,
The hilltops flame with gestures of farewell,
He is not dead, though here his beams are dying
And purple wreaths proclaim his burial,
He is not dead, but with unfailing might
He carries on his ceaseless war with night,
Marshalling on other fields his phalanxes of light.