The Poetry of South Africa. Various

(Like a father consoling his fretful child),

       Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear—

       Saying—Man is distant, but God is near!

       Thomas Pringle.

EVENING RAMBLES.

       Table of Contents

      The sultry summer-noon is past;

       And mellow evening comes at last,

       With a low and languid breeze

       Fanning the mimosa trees,

       That cluster o’er the yellow vale,

       And oft perfume the panting gale

       With fragrance faint; it seems to tell

       Of primrose-tufts in Scottish dell,

       Peeping forth in tender spring

       When the blithe lark begins to sing.

      But soon, amidst our Libyan vale,

       Such soothing recollections fail;

       Soon we raise the eye to range

       O’er prospects wild, grotesque, and strange:

       Sterile mountains, rough and steep,

       That bound abrupt the valley deep,

       Heaving to the clear blue sky

       Their ribs of granite, bare and dry,

       And ridges by the torrents worn,

       Thinly streaked with scraggy thorn,

       Which fringes nature’s savage dress,

       Yet scarce relieves her nakedness.

      But where the vale winds deep below

       The landscape hath a warmer glow:

       There the spekboom spreads its bowers

       Of light green leaves and lilac flowers;

       And the aloe rears her crimson crest,

       Like stately queen for gala drest;

       And the bright-blossomed bean-tree shakes

       Its coral tufts above the brakes,

       Brilliant as the glancing plumes

       Of sugar birds among its blooms,

       With the deep green verdure bending

       In the stream of light descending.

      And now along the grassy meads,

       Where the skipping reebok feeds,

       Let me through the mazes rove

       Of the light acacia grove;

       Now while yet the honey-bee

       Hums around the blossomed tree;

       And the turtles softly chide,

       Wooingly, on every side;

       And the clucking pheasant calls

       To his mate at intervals;

       And the duiker at my tread

       Sudden lifts his startled head,

       Then dives affrighted in the brake,

       Like wild duck in the reedy lake.

      My wonted seat receives me now—

       This cliff with myrtle-tufted brow,

       Towering high o’er grove and stream,

       As if to greet the parting gleam.

       With shattered rocks besprinkled o’er,

       Behind ascends the mountain hoar,

       Whose crest o’erhangs the Bushman’s cave

       (His fortress once and now his grave),

       Where the grim satyr-faced baboon

       Sits gibbering on the rising moon,

       Or chides with hoarse and angry cry

       The herdsman as he wanders by.

      Spread out below in sun and shade,

       The shaggy Glen lies full displayed—

       Its sheltered nooks, its sylvan bowers,

       Its meadows flushed with purple flowers;

       And through it like a dragon spread,

       I trace the river’s tortuous bed.

       Lo! there the Chaldee-willow weeps

       Drooping o’er the headlong steeps,

       Where the torrent in his wrath

       Hath rifted him a rugged path,

       Like fissure cleft by earthquake’s shock,

       Through mead and jungle, mound and rock.

       But the swoln water’s wasteful sway,

       Like tyrant’s rage, hath passed away,

       And left the ravage of its course

       Memorial of its frantic force.

       —Now o’er its shrunk and slimy bed

       Rank weeds and withered wrack are spread,

       With the faint rill just oozing through,

       And vanishing again from view;

       Save where the guana’s glassy pool

       Holds to some cliff its mirror cool,

       Girt by the palmite’s leafy screen,

       Or graceful rock-ash, tall and green,

       Whose slender sprays above the flood

       Suspend the loxia’s callow brood

       In cradle-nests, with porch below,

       Secure from winged or creeping foe—

       Weasel or hawk or writhing snake;

       Light swinging, as the breezes wake,

       Like the ripe fruit we love to see

       Upon the rich pomegranate tree.

      But lo! the sun’s descending car

       Sinks o’er Mount Dunion’s peaks afar;

       And now along the dusky vale

       The homeward herds and flocks I hail,

       Returning from their pastures dry

       Amid the stony uplands high.

       First, the brown Herder with his flock

       Comes winding round my hermit-rock:

       His mien and gait and gesture tell,

       No shepherd he from Scottish fell;

       For crook the guardian gun he bears,

       For plaid the sheepskin mantle wears;

       Sauntering languidly along;

       Nor flute has he, nor merry song,

       Nor book, nor tale, nor rustic lay,

       To cheer him through his listless day.

       His look is dull, his soul is dark;

       He feels not hope’s electric spark;

       But, born the white man’s servile thrall,

       Knows that he cannot lower fall.

       Next the stout Neat-herd passes by,

       With bolder step and blither eye;

       Humming low his tuneless song,

       Or whistling