A Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse/John Runcie
A SLUMBER SONG OF THE PUBLIC GARDENS, CAPE TOWN.
"I'se gwine home to Dixie,
I'se gwine no more to wander."
—Old Plantation Song.
Soft haze upon the mountain and a haze upon the sea,
High noon above the Gardens and shadows on the way;
And twenty weary people slipping out of time awee,—
Out of time and out of trouble, on a hot midsummer's day.
Blow softly, silver trumpets, in a fairy serenade,
Ye lilies of St. Joseph, swinging lightly over-head.
In the shadows of the Gardens the wearied come to rest,
In the spacious dusk and quiet the fevered blood is stilled;
While sleep, on tiptoe stepping, lays aside the hopeless quest,
Takes away the fag of travel and the promise unfulfilled;
In white and gold and purple the wondrous petals gleam;
In white and gold and purple is the wondrous slope of dream.
Here be ever Jew and Gentile, Briton, German, Dago, Pole,—
Mostly young and mostly reckless, some unkempt or liquor-stained;
Here and there a grizzled hobo, or be-painted, draggled troll;
Here and there an eager seeker for the labour yet ungained;
Not alone for rank or station may Titania's maidens bring
Happy dreams of happy Dixie to the people slumbering.
Here's a lad—and ne'er a razor licked the smoothness of his chin,—
Curly-headed, slim and supple, coiled within a corner seat,
Worn at heel, and frayed at elbow, blistered foot, and roughened skin—
God! how far we have to wander for a little bread to eat!
Puck, who puts on mortal eyelids filmy cobwebs, hither, quick!
Take the boy across the water, he is ill or mammy-sick.
Fires of life among your ashes, what have ye to give or gain,
In that haggard shell and ancient, snoring on with mouth agape?
What among your outworn pleasures hold ye now, and what remain,
Heartsome still,—a rank old cutty and a little juice of grape?
Still with these a man may travel to the last foot-weary mile,
Halting for a dream of Dixie in the garden depths awhile.
In the mine's untrammelled shanty or Johannesburg cabouse,
O'er the cards and vicious whisky, men may query in a jest,
How she struck the trail to Cape Town in her paint and lacquered shoes,
With her skirts' pathetic draggle, hopeless, weary like the rest,
Here, within the pure bright Gardens, lei the fairy folk undo
What the mortal folk have made her, for a blissful hour or two.
Evermore through sun and shadow wafting down upon the grass,
Takes the dreamers back to Dixie—wheresoever that may be,—
To the lost health and the mother, to the lost youth and the lass
Over all the plains and mountains, over all the leagues of sea:
All roads but lead to quiet, though the heat and noise be long,—
Grace for the sleepers, by your leave, and this their slumber song!
John Runcie.
VAN RIEBECK.[1]
Mayhap it was the Lady Moon,
Or that dream-laden opiate
"Magaliesberg," when hours were late,
And wakeful crickets shrilled their tune;
Or maybe 'twas the soul of grape,
That as the eve of Christmas drew
To Christmas morning, woke anew
The old-world shadows of the Cape.
I saw Van Riebeck standing near,
In leathern jerkin, sword in hand;
His boat was beached upon the sand,
And three sea-lights were burning clear.
A little man he seemed to me,
Thick-set and firm and keenly-eyed,
Broad-belted, gloved, and hatted wide,
With buckled shoe and hosened knee.
Like one who, musing, seemed to know
The fancies thronging through the mind,
He answered what my glance defined,
With that quaint grace of long ago:—
"Lo, ye have built your city white
Where once a little fort was raised,
And where the lumbering zeekoe grazed
Your Noël carols ring to-night.
"And where a day's march could not span,
A little hour will set you down
In comfort in your Simon's Town,
Without a tear for beast or man.
"From here to yon far river's flow
Your Royal flag is floating free;
'Twas Cromwell's flag we met at sea,
When Tromp and Blake fought long ago.
"How far anon your way may bend,
The Book of Fate alone foretells;
Mayhap your steel-drawn parallels
Will bind these countries end to end.
"How far ye go in days to be,
I know not; but in days gone by,
Behold! the light in yon dark sky
Was kindled by our folk and me.
"Ye may forget! In this large day
What boots a little fort or kraal,
With teeming street and window'd wall,
And crowded wharves of Table Bay?
"But this I say, and this I know,
Whatever scribes may think or write,—
Behold, behind one man is Night,
And from one man the Tale must How."
And then he passed. The Bay was bright
With riding lights, but like a smoke
Three high-pooped ships in canvas broke,
And drifted swiftly out of sight.
John Runcie.
- ↑ Van Riebeck—one of the earliest Dutch Governors of the Cape.
CROSSING THE HEX MOUNTAINS.
At Tweefontein in the moonlight the little white tents shine,
And a cry comes out of the darkness from those who guard the line;
The panting heart of the engine pulsed through the resting cars,
And beyond are the quiet mountains, and above are the quiet stars.
Sinister rise the mountains, jagged and bleak and bare,
Cloven and rent and fissured by fire and torrent there;
But the moon is a tender lady that loves not sights like these
And in her spell transfigured, all things must soothe and please.
Far on the veldt behind us shone the steel-drawn parallels,
And beneath was the famished river led by the famished wells,
And behind the shuttered windows, and beneath the hooded light,
Folk in the train were sleeping through all the wondrous night.
But I was out on the platform waiting the whistle shrill
That would break in a lustre of echoes right on the face of the hill;
Break on the face of the mountain and lose themselves in the pass,
Where the rails are like threads of silver, and the boulders smooth as glass.
Forth with the grinding of couplings, the hissing and snorting of steam,
Till the rails spun out behind her like spider-threads agleam,
Till she roared at the foot of the mountain, and brawled through the echoing glen,
Roaring, rocking, and ringing out her pagan of conquering men.
Right to the edge of a boulder, ominous, big, and black;
Plucking our hearts to our parching throats with the open track;
Then forth like a driving piston straight from its irons heath,
Till the wind stormed down on our faces, and we could not see nor breathe.
Looping, climbing, and falling, panting and swooping she sped,
Like a snake at the foot of the mountain, with her great white lamp ahead;
Shouldering the heavy gradients, heedless of breathing spells,
And racing away like a maddened steed down the sloping parallels.
Then out of De Doorns she thundered, and over the starved Karoo,
Dwindling the hills behind her, farther and farther she flew;
And I know not which to praise the more—these moon-shot hills of God,
Or the genius of the men who planned and made the glorious road.
John Runcie.
THE VELDT FOLK.
In these great spaces they abide for ever,
Nor may they hive in cities even as we,
Whose toil from crowded shire and teeming river
Finds markets over-sea.
Nor they, like Israel whom the Lord befriended,
With flock and herd and bountiful increase,
Were searched by war, that so when war was ended,
All men might dwell in peace.
Upon their lives the sun and moon slow-swinging,
Through days and years o'er vast, untroubled skies,
Have wrought an affluent peace, a love fast-clinging
To freedom large and wise.
By narrow laws we judge the farmer people,
Whose larger outlook we would fain gainsay,
Even as we fain would coop beneath a steeple
The God to whom we pray.
God gave the Law in lightning and in thunder,
To that lost nation bann'd and unredeemed,—
A pastoral people, whom He swept asunder
Because of Baal they dreamed.
Even so to these, the Veldt Folk, God hath given
The near communion in His Temple vast,
Wherein He speaketh yet, in awful levin,
And in the thunder blast.
We judge by roaring loom and crowded harbour,
By teeming street and plenteous gear and gold,
Where Greatness dwells; and yet within an arbour
Sits Wisdom as of old.
All men conserve their Faith who, dwelling lonely
In those vast breadths of kopje, stream, and plain,
Fulfil their happiness by reason only
That wealth to them is vain;—
That wealth is vain, and Freedom more than cattle;
Ay, more than life, as when in troubled shires,
Of old were gathered up to awful battle
Our own victorious sires.
John Runcie.