In seventeen-seventy-three my story —
On June the first at dawn of day —
Begins, where raging storms have maddened
The tranquil waves of Table Bay.

Battered by those angry billows,
And beaten by the blind wind's scourge,
A ship runs — reels — is torn and spitted
By rock-fangs hidden in foaming surge.

As wild-dove pierced by an unseen arrow,
Wounded, sinking, the good ship lies;
Her hapless crew in white-eyed terror
Harrow the air with hopeless cries.

Scattered on the shore are watchers,
Some seek plunder — base-got gear —
Others who would help are helpless,
Faltering in the bonds of fear.

To their midst a man comes riding:
Who is this horseman gaunt and grey?
Who this monarch clad so meanly,
Whose eyes are bright as sun-born day?

One it is who on a farmstead
Far from wrangling throngs has dwelt;
A humble hind, a cattle herdsman,
A patient nursling of the veld.

While he watched the cattle feeding
By stony koppie, sun-drenched plain,
Perhaps he dreamed of lives heroic,
And prayed that his might not be vain:

And while he milked the full-fed cattle,
When suns burnt on the mountain-belt,
Perhaps he dreamed of high adventure —
This scion of the sun-proud veld.

*****

The day has come — the great adventure:
He scans the helpless cowards there,
He kindles his beast with breath heroic —
And they face the tempest's blast and blare.

Around them surges snarl and bellow,
About them hisses blinding spray,
While on the beach the breathless watchers
Forget their terror and their prey.

Seven times they brave the path of peril
And souls twice seven are brought to shore,
But from the last great, glad adventure
The bright-eyed brothers come no more.

Return no more? Nay, they are with us!
They'll perish never, that noble twain!
Men pass like dews, but deeds of valour
Are founts that fail not in life's plain.

Man sinks to silence: like sweet music
His high deeds haunt with echoes felt
By dwellers in the crowded city
Or lonely farm on the crinkled veld.

— Ocean in unflinching struggle,
Warfare old as his waves are old,
Snatched never from earth a spoil more splendid
Than Woltemade. My tale is told.