Livingstone in Africa/Canto III

by Hon. Roden Noel

 

CANTO III.

Now in my far enchanted solitude,
My long life moves before me like a dream . . .

A child in Ulva, by the Northern sea,
I hear my father at our evening prayer,
And wild Gael singing of my grandmother.
A factory boy upon the banks of Clyde;
For all the dissonant whirl of enginery,
I seize the food of learning, swiftly glancing
On some dear volume, laid upon a marge
Of the great spinning-jenny, as I pass,
Repassing ever in monotonous toil.
Fired with the splendour of the Lord of Love,
I long to unfurl His standard in the world:
For this I conquer arts laborious
Of serviceable healing; and I grow
Adept in many a helpful handicraft;

So full equipp'd, with arduous effort arm'd,
Living a temperate, reasonable life,
I bear a stout heart in a season'd frame;
And emulous of illustrious pioneers,
Nor all unmindful of my sires austere,
I find myself i' the heart of Africa,
Helping the father of my bride to be.

My long life moves before me like a dream.
Behold! our mission-house at Kolobeng:
These labour-roughen'd hands have builded it.
Nor for myself alone, but for the dark
Children of whom I am the father here,
I labour with strong hand, and heart, and soul.
I smelt rude ores; and, fervid as large eyes
Of wrathful tigers, ringing iron yields
Upon mine anvil, hammer'd heartily;
While a bow'd native plies the goatskin bellows.
Lusty and hale, in manhood's vigorous prime,
I startle the lone woods with stalwart blows;
While cream-white splinters fly from stubborn trunks,

Whose leafy pride falls headlong shattering;
My wife with finger nimble, dexterous,
Moulding the while a hundred things at home.

There is a power enthralling human souls
In equal dealings, in a lofty life,
And lowly Love's unwearying ministry.
One who inherits wisdom's treasure-house,
And lives endow'd with more than wonted grace
Of human faculty, may forge the gold
Thereof to ignominious chains for men;
Or twine the spiritual wealth, for their
Deliverance, to cords of fair persuasion,
Wooing their own endeavours after God.
I wielding for the common use, not mine,
A wider knowledge and a riper skill,
Bestow'd free counsel or sincere reproof;
Tended my children when their bodies ail'd;
Lent a large heart to small perplexities.
And simple tales of hourly human woe. . . .
. . . Have these a lowlier place allotted them?
Yet they full surely have their post prepared

In God's world-army: I will help them there.
And I believe Jesus, the Man of men,
Who is God's personal Love and Righteousness,
To be the one and only living Lord,
Ruler alike of loftiest and least,
Who, being reveal'd, will draw men unto Him,
Each in his order and foreknown degree.

Sun of the living! Hesper of the gloom!
Surely Thy dusky children call for Thee,
Unknowing whom they call—the wail resounds
Yet in mine ears of some funereal dirge
For one beloved and vanished; when the moon
Wavers, as if in water, among leaves
Of air-moved umbrage; and a bark-built village
Lies in pale elf-light, with embowering palm
And silvern plantain; lonely forest shades
Of over-frowning mountain-presences
With stealthily mysterious forms aware.
A bitter, long, monotonous human wail!
More poignant than the cries of animal lives
In unreverberate torture; 'tis a wail

Of one that's cloven to the depths of being,
Maim'd in the vitals of an immortal soul.
To me it seems alive with the wild prayer,
This poor blind people hath so oft preferr'd,
Crying with dumb yet infinite eloquence,
"O wise white man! we pray thee give us sleep!"
So moans a hollow voice reverberate
In long-drawn aisles of some sepulchral vault;
So moans the mystic growth Mandragora,
Feeding on human ravage in a ruin
Under a gibbet, when one pulls the root.
How long have these then cower'd here in night,
Mouthpieces of creation's misery,
Wailing the world's wail in closed ears of God?
Whom now lament they? some beloved friend,
Chief, mother, bride, or child, who turn'd so cold
And strange and silent; who may not abide
Any more here in sweet sunlight with them,
Or pleasant interchange of word and smile;
Gone forth for ever from them to the chill
And cheerless realm of dreams impalpable

Nevermore! wails the burden of the strain,
Burdening, as it seems, the very sleep
Of a serene, fair incense-breathing earth!
Ever it wails, low, dreary, and desolate,
Oppress'd and muffled in a solemn sorrow;
A dirge world-weary, an old-world requiem,
Trailing a slow wan length along the dust,
Faint from the fount of immemorial tears;
A shadow, whose maim'd wings are plumed with awe;
Sunken so deep from ghostly woes and fears,
And broken hearts of all ancestral lives;
Phantoms aroused by a fresh living pain
To haunt the labyrinths of a living soul,
And all the dark slow movement of the dirge!

One cabin stands a little way apart
From all the rest upon a higher ground.
Hence flows the wail! A man laments his son.
It is an aged warrior of the tribe,
Who cowers, and sways himself upon the floor,
Before an ember glow, that he beholds

Only in dreaming; while a warm, red gleam
Falls on the brown of rude encircling wall,
Leaving a smoke-beclouded roof in gloom;
Falls on barb'd javelins, and bows and arrows,
And many hunting spoils of him who lies
Near to his father, silent, stark, and cold;
Ruddies the dark bare limbs of life and death.
Rich furs are under and over the young form;
Furs golden, furs of lynx, and ocelot:
A small uncomely dog, with pointed ears,
Presses his faithful body to the corpse.
He was a comely boy, a mighty hunter,
A bold young warrior, hope of all the tribe,
And his infirm old father's only stay.
When humid morning, chill, and pale, and wan,
Peers at those intervals between the boughs
Of wattled wall, yon ashes will be grey,
And still the old man be cowering by the dead!
Then the fond faltering sire must wander forth
Alone; away from this unpitying herd
Of yet unwounded men into the wild;
There to fade slowly; with a feeble hand

Plucking the berries, pulling up the roots;
A living skeleton, grim woe and want
In dim, scared eyes; until the wolf and raven
Find him low laid, their unresisting prey!

The father's wail, like mournful waves unseen,
Dies on the ear, and moans alternately;
But later, figures gather in the open,
Lamenting by a fire new-made the dead. . . .
What wizard, with his incantation curst,
Blasted the living; changing to a foe,
And chilling fear, what was so amiable?⁷
Over the shoulder timorously glance
They, at the very rustling of a leaf,
To where the dead lie yonder in the forest,
Strewn with some humble offerings they need:
Food, bowls, or ivory, arms, and hunting gear.
Now beat loud tamtams; rattle hollow drums!
So scare away the dim unhomely ghost
With yells, and shouts, and drunken revelry. . . .
"Ah! shadow-muffled panther, with fierce eyes,
Prowling and mumbling yonder, art thou he?

Ah! whispering leaves of darkling forest trees!
Ye are ill whispers of infernal fiends!
But we will drown the bitterness of woe,
Frowning, foreboding, and bewildering fear!"

⁸ Behold! one stalks emergent from a cave
In yon far-off enfoldings of the hills,
Where he has lain in some enchanted swoon,
From when the moon her slender silver bow
Lifted in blue night, till she rose an orb,
Fully resplendent argent, even now.
And he is haggard, worn, emaciate
With vigil and with fast; a tawny hide
Of some wild beast about his grimy frame,
Charms of link'd leopard's teeth upon his breast,
And leopard's liver for an amulet.
With stained, hideous face, and jingling bells,
And for a head-gear feathers of a bird,
He sits among the mourners by the fire.
Then all gesticulating chaunt a prayer;
Till he, the prophet, fearfully convulsed,
Falls like a corpse; but all the people cry:

"Oh moon! Ilogo! spirit of the moon!
Thine are the rivers,
Thine, Ilogo!
And the wilds and mountains,
Thine, Ilogo!
Reveal who hath enchanted our beloved!
Oh moon! Ilogo! spirit of the moon!
Hear us, Ilogo!"

And then the prophet from his death-like swoon
Arouses; from communion with the Moon.
His dusky tribe are gathering around;
Silence falls ominous on all intent;
Till with harsh, croaking tones the devil proclaims:
"Lamoli! it was she bewitch'd the dead!"
Then all the naked savages roll eyes
Of fanatic fury, and, yelling horribly,
Rush toward a leaf-thatched cabin, shouting hoarse:
"Let the Muave draught convict the witch!"
They drag from thence a shrieking, innocent maid,
Who shivers with the pang of mortal fear:

Hustled she drains among the cursing crew
Ordeal poison from a gourden bowl,
And, struggling piteous to reverse the doom
Of her young murder, reels, and sinks, and falls;
A hundred daggers mangling her fair life. . . . .
Do these not need the Gospel of the Lord?

Therefore I press right onward to my goal:
Nor only for an hour, a month, a year;
But while life lasts, a warrior to the end,
I wrest from Fortune all she would withhold.
Even as a lion in his sultry lair
Shakes off a myriad dew-drops from his mane,
So have I spurn'd all hampering obstacle,
Regarding danger with a quiet smile.
O civilizer, shrink from Violence!
Use Righteousness, and broad Humanity,
With temperate firmness; govern your own selves,
And so the people: yet never seem to fear;
Nor be ye loth to call auxiliar might
Of muscular right arm, or deadly rifle,

If these prove helpful in extremity.

Whose guiltless blood weighs on my soul to-day?
I have not injured, mock'd, insulted any:
I have been wanting in an English pride;
Nor feel the grand immeasurable gulf,
Which every drunken subaltern may feel
Between the veriest scum of England's isle,
And of all infusorial "foreigners"
The least unworthy—nay; for even him,
Whom, with all colour'd races of the world,
We from superior panoramic heights,
With one judicial and exhaustive wave
Of hand, may name and sweep from sympathy,
Even the "damn'd nigger" I have not contemn'd;
Knowing that if the Lord regarded us
Proud English from "damn'd nigger" points of view,
All would be damn'd indeed without reprieve.

⁹ A lion once, a mightiest male lion,
Whom my good rifle's bullet had but maim'd,

Sprang in his wrath; one huge and ponderous paw,
Striking my shoulder, hurl'd me under him.
Over me stood the vast dilated beast
Growling; his paw weigh'd on my shatter'd shoulder;
His great eyes glower'd; his fangs gleam'd terrible;
Like a simoom, his breathing scorch'd my face;
With tawny wilderness of mane aroused,
Frowning, aloft he swung his tufted tail.
But God removed all terrors and all pain:
When the brute shook me, numb indifference
Stole over all my being, while I watch'd;
Yea, look'd into the formidable eyes!
(So Love tempers inevitable blows
Of Fate for all the sons of suffering:)
A comrade fires; the lion springs on him;
Then fainting staggers,—ponderous falls—and dies.

My long life moves before me like a dream.

We fell'd our way through groves impervious
To healthful daylight; realms of ravenous beast,

And venom'd snake secreted in the gloom;
Dismal dead trees enshrouded with the pale
Dense life of lichen that hath stifled them;
Where lurks foul carrion, and agarics
Fouler than carrion infect the air,
Mid noisome immemorial forest mould.
We crush'd through deadlier thickets of rank growth,
Whose blades colossal, notch'd with tearing teeth,
Rise in dense walls above the ox-rider:
These wound, entangle: while his lower limbs
Are chill'd by shadowy dews that ne'er exhale
From labyrinths of marshlight-haunted fen,
Dismal in dull death-gendering decay,
His head and shoulders burn with torrid fire,
Unshelter'd from a humid sultry sky.
My body and my raiment rent with thorns,
These lacerated feet refuse to bear
Me any further; and I linger long,
A prisoner, waiting for my wounds to heal.
I have waded waist-deep in stagnating water
Of inundated equatorial plains,

And, swathed in saturated raiment, march'd
On, till hot air hath drain'd their moisture dry;
Then, for how many torturing nights and days
Have I lain in the gripe of dire disease,
Clinging inveterate to devour my life;
Evil inharmonious monsters ravening
Around these hells of my delirium!
When poor dark savage brothers tended me
With a white wife's untiring tenderness.
Some hearts, in sooth, of those my followers,
Quailing before long toil herculean,
Weary of peril in the very air
We breathe, a Protean never-sleeping peril,
Often immeasurable, unforeknown,
Shrank from my side; yea, even some of whom
I had hoped better things—but some, alas!
Were weak and worthless instruments, that break
In hands of whoso trusts in a fair show:
And some were agents of the slave-trader,
Sworn to oppose, and drive me to despair.

 Anon we travel

Over immense brown regions, no sweet rain
Rendereth mild with gracious influence:
A harsh rude waste, hated by man and beast;
Where the foot sinks in scorching loose brown sand
At every toilsome footfall; while the sun
Strikes upward from a powdery parch'd earth,
Tanning and blistering: fiercely from on high
He smites upon bow'd heads of travellers,
Under arch'd awning of a labouring wain,
Or swaying slowly on a lean worn ox.
Poor oxen! how they pant, and loll the tongue,
Beaten of urgent teamsters with loud whips,
Pulling at wheels, that settle clogg'd with sand.
Shadows are sharply blotted on the ground:
Blue blazing daylight glares intolerable:
In a half-dreaming doze we journey on,
Still for our sole horizon the wan waste.
But when some watermelon loll'd before us,
How all rush'd eager on the priceless prize,
A large green ball upon an arid soil!
Slashing the cool pink pulp, that wells with life,
And burying mouths in fair fresh nectar-springs.

 How terrible is thirst!
Days without water! ne'er a watermelon
Even, to slake a moment hell's own drought! . . .
Hark! shouts of joy break in upon the drear
Faint slumbrous silence of our fiery way:
All startled raise dim half-closed aching eyes—
Behold the lake! our goal in sight! Hurrah!
Lofty palmyras, palm, acacia,
O'er hazy waters purple in the sun,
Who sets below in solitary glory—
And surely on a pale horizon line
Tall sable horsemen galloping furiously!
See the slow oxen gaze aroused, and lowing
Hasten—behold black bulks of elephant,
And slim giraffes, show water to be near!
Shall we pursue?

 . . . They dwindle, waver, and change;
All blows like slanting flame; drifting divides.
It was the Satan's simulated water!
And only mist roll'd over a salt plain.
Yet the same region hath its wither'd herb;

Wells that fill slowly when one deftly digs;
Stunted green bushes, pools of rainwater,
Where skeleton women drink from ostrich eggs;
And even springs where tall lush grasses grow.
Here the light zebra, and the swift wild ass,
Bound by elastic, and the shaggy gnu
Glares with red eye; here bristle porcupines;
Fussy ichneumon scuttles; ratels tumble;
Ash-hued coarse-haired anteaters with long snout
Lurk, like distortions of a curious dream.

My long life moves before me like a dream!

The cheerful bustle of the morning march!
Shouts of the driver; scuffling of loud beasts!
Delicious swims and baths in some lone pool,
With chestnut-colour'd leaves in the blue glass,
And gorgeous birds reflected as they fly!

Appears the dear wild nightly bivouac
In some dim forest,—I upon a couch
Of woven rushes, under a furr'd hide,

Shelter'd, it may be, by a roof of boughs.
A grimy cauldron slung athwart the blaze
Held our repast of savoury buffalo-meat:
(Ere sunset had my rifle slain the beast)
But now my dusky troop surround the fire,
That ruddies their swart forms and visages,
Leaping to flame, with crackling faggot piled;
Subsiding soon to embers deeply glowing.
Illumined smoke drifts fragrant, wavering
Among mazes of long involved llianas,
That seem in the red, hesitating light,
To move alive, like pythons watching prey.
There breathes a strange, delicious woodland smell;
Resinous amber glimmers to the stars;
Richly-dim blossoms, many-hued, immense,
Droop fragrant heaven, a milky way of flowers,
Wherein by day the nimble monkey hurries,
And gorgeous parrot screams—now all is hush'd.

Yet there are weird, wild songs about the fire
Peals of a reckless, frolic merriment,
Immoderate jests of nature's shameless child

Dazed with the wassail-bowl, and fumes that rise
From gurgling gourds, to steal bewilder'd sense,
Sense light as thistle-down; gay young buffoons,
And elder fools allowing allusions free,
With frantic, half-lewd gestures, bounden only
By salutary fear of me, the Master . . . .

One tells a tale of perilous hunts with spear,
Envenom'd arrows, shields of rugged hide;
Relates the infuriate, unwieldy charge
Of rough, one-horn'd, uncouth rhinoceros;
Or elephant snapping crush'd dishevell'd trees,
With horrible, ear-bursting trumpet-bray.
They tell of graceful, lithe, long-neck'd giraffes,
Beating the plain with undulating flight;
Strong striding ostrich, spuming the burnt sand;
Of crawling dumb to leeward of a herd—
Kudu, or eland wearing wreathen horns.

Or they relate some wonderful weird tale
Of sorcery and superstition strange;
For one affirms he knew in such a village

A man who turn'd at intervals to leopard,
Lurking in dens to feed upon mankind;
Anon the beast's heart gather'd strong within him;
Burn'd to devour, to lap the blood of men;
Until the lust of death beyond control
Drove him from home into the awful wild—
Where, horror! transformation swiftly grew
From the inhuman heart to the man's mind,
And human limbs—behold! he crouches low,
Fire-eyed, in act to spring—sleek, supple beast,
His body of flame starr'd over with black night:
Large-brain'd, blood-thirstiest of the infernal crew,
Six human victims hath the wizard slain,
Ere, man once more, the avengers torture him,
Avowing with bitter tears the sorcery. . . . .
Then many a negro, shivering, glances round,
Timidly peering into forest gloom;
They pile more wood; sitting in silence, till
Another adds his marvel to the store.

Is it all fable? is it all illusion?
Nay, doth not our most awful Universe

Lead poor, mad mortals to the wilds alone,
Into a barren wilderness of souls;
Mask'd in stern iron, prison'd in adamant,
A fiery gulf between them and the world;
Forbidden dear embracings of their kind,
And mutually yielding thoughts of all?
Though girt with kindly, once familiar faces,
Lonelier they than are the lonely dead;
Or haunted only by fell fiends that scowl
Out of the very eyes of sleepless love!
God whirls them forth, and sets them in a cleft
Of some ice-armour'd, cloud-robed precipice:
It snows, it howls; the everlasting mountains
Reel, crashing downward in the lightning's eye:
God murmurs in their ears a Mystery
In tongues unknown, of import terrible,
That none may hear or comprehend but they;
Nor even they, but in maim'd cadences;
Wind-wilder'd murmurs of a music wild.
Ah! we all wander blindly in a dream!
Save for a revelation from the Lord.

They tell of our adventures by the road,
Wonderful, fearful, laughable or grave;
Gesticulating passionately gay,
Grimacing with a monkey-mimicry.
One says that white men rise from the salt sea;
Verily live below the green water;
Whence comes our long, lank compromise for hair:
The water we inhabit straightens it!
They mention my rough dog, poor old Chitani,¹⁰
Whom they affirm I cherish for his tail,
A tail that curls to right and not to left;
A tail by learnèd men discredited!

My trusty followers, my Makololo,
Astound the rest, relating how they toil'd
Athwart the continent;¹¹ arriving last
On a subsiding ridge of table-land;
Whence without warning burst upon their view,
Ocean!
Ocean! Vision never dream'd before—
On Him in His sublime infinitude,
Soliloquizing awful in the gloom;

With one intolerable rift of light
Vibrating in the immeasurable waste
Of massy, torn, wan water that ascends,
To meet confusion of the hurrying cloud,
Releasing misty momentary rays;
While in this shifting gulf of utter light,
A snowy sail shows black as ebony.

"Spell-bound we pause: we had follow'd this our Father,
Him of the honest heart, our wise white friend,
Through weal and woe, a weary, weary way,
From our own homes; in face of all the people
Spake, while we journey'd through their several lands,
That never white man brought an African
Here to the coast, save only to enslave;
But we would trust our father; we had proved
Him well, and he had promised; yea, we know
The English have good hearts for Africa!
And yet we pause at the sublime surprise.
For we had faith in what our Ancients told,

That the great World continueth evermore;
And now the World Himself saith unto us,
'Lo! I am ended! there is no more of me!'
Moreover, marching on with our sick Leader,
Whom we support, astounded we discern
Dwellings of white men, mountains of white stone
With caves therein! and, yet more wonderful,
Upon the water, rolling near inshore,
A painted floating town, with fronting idol!
A giant bird with great white flapping wings,
Whose thunderous rebellion men that swarm
In windy, reeling heights are conquering
By strong enveloping of resolute arms!
Then, trusting to the word of our good Father,
Half timidly we climb the floating town,
Whose common soldiers, mariners, and chiefs
Pay joyful homage to our own dear lord;
And all of them have kindly hearts for us.
But round the wooden walls dark, iron mouths
Of demons gape; whence, being touch'd with fire,
Leap thunderous lightnings, Genii clothed in smoke!

Pointing to them, our Father said to us,—
'With these grim mouths we stop the sale of men!'
And then our Father, very near to death,
Though his white friends would fain have borne him home,
Would suffer not his children to pursue
Alone their arduous perilous return:
'My Makololo boys have served me well,'
Said he, 'and I will not desert them now!'"

Well I remember, O my splendid Sea,
How thy salt breath blew o'er me, as alive!
After interminable deserts drear,
And dank hot jungles of the savage race,
To come upon thee, Ocean, unaware,
Dear native element of all the free!
With British tars, and British hearts of oak,
And the old fiery flag upon the wind!
Tears blind my vision—yonder England lies!
A grey gull, in his strong deliberate fligh,
Hover'd and slanted, dipp'd his breast in brine.
Exulting in the wind and turbulent foam;

While half the mortal languor left my limbs,
And I rejoiced with him. From sea to sea!
I traversed all the dark, blank continent;
And proved it not, as timid idle dream
Surmised, an evil waste unprofitable,
Huge blot on God's most bountiful, fair world;
Rather a promised land of living waters!
Like that king's daughter in the fairy tale,
Asleep, awaiting her Deliverer.

How clearly do mine inner eyes behold
The dear, wild nightly bivouac of yore,
When I was in my manhood's vigorous prime!
If it were in the prairie, or the desert,
Sinbad, my riding ox, with other oxen,
Would lie beside the looming bullock-wain,
Audibly ruminating, couch'd at ease
Upon his shadow, in a luminous moon.
If it were in a forest, such as last
Appear'd before my musing memory;
When I have heard awhile my followers' tales,
Wearily close mine ears in first faint sleep,

Half hearing only broken words, and names
Of tribes or places, weird, and all germane
To the mysterious realm of forest wild.
But later still, silence inviolate reigns;
Save for a low communing of weird wind
Among high crowns of leafy ebonies,
Moving and murmuring, while star-worlds pass over.
When I awake, dark forms are lying round:
Firelight warms faintly mighty sylvan pillars,
Rising from gloom to gloom: they seem to my
Drowsed senses ancient phantoms of the night.
Thousands of years, some say, the huge Mowana
Flourishing lives, while mortal men around
Fall with his leaves, and wither at his feet.
How could he tell of fleeting hopes and fears,
Of myriad passing loves, and woes, and wars!
Emmets and men, teeming and vanishing,
In halls of stone, or tunnell'd, chamber'd hills,
Or wattled huts, as here I men's thrilling lives
Gleam, firefly-like, a moment wonderful;
Frail, nor so blithe as yon fair living lights,
That are and are not in the fragrant shade.

And since she died,¹² rapture of my young years,
Lore, and abiding pole-star of my life!
A marble cross, that gleams amid the gloom
Shines ever in dim vistas of my soul;
And I desire to lay my toil-worn limbs
Under still leaves of some primæval grove,
As she, my well-beloved, resteth hers.
She sail'd from England, to divide my care,
With brave Mackenzie's and another's wife:
Alas! Mackenzie and his friend had fallen
In the stern path of duty when they came!
And these two white-faced women wept alone
Over two very silent forest graves.
Alas! how soon I wept beside another;
For very soon my Mary went to rest.
(Her venerable father, Moffat, only
Is known among the tribes of Africa
As my own Mary's father, as Ra-Mary.)
The fever seized her, and she pass'd away:
She pass'd at sunset on a Sabbath eve,
And left my feet to wander in the shade.

Upon a gentle, green acclivity,
Under a venerable Mowana tree,
Garlanded with odorous flowers,
Tranquil in the sunny hours,
She sleeps in glory!

Orchards of mango basking in the south;
Northward fair palm, and many a noble growth
Of oriental forest tree,
Where silvern Liambayee
Wanders in glory;

On his fair bosom many a sunny isle,
Calm as herself within the heavenly smile:
Upon the marble of her grave
Mowana shadows gently wave,
Waver in glory.

Pearly light clouds about his purple form,
High in the azure, deep, and wide, and warm,
Mount Morambala soareth high,
Serene in mountain majesty,
Dreaming in glory:

Gleam forth, O marble, from the wilding gloom!
Shine, O white cross, upon the martyr's tomb!
Faithful toil, long-suffering care,
Radiate over dark and fair,
Burst into glory!