Voices of jackals calling

And, loud in the hush between, A morsel of dry earth falling

From the flanks of the scarred ravine.

Details guarding the line.)

Quick, ere the gift escape us!

Out of the darkness we reach
For a handful of week-old papers
And a mouthful of human speech.

And the monstrous heaven rejoices,
And the earth allows again,
Meetings, greetings, and voices
Of women talking with men.

So we return to our places,

As out on the bridge she rolls; And the darkness covers our faces,

And the darkness re-enters our souls.

More than a little lonely

Where the lessening tail-lights shine.

No not combatants

only

Details guarding the line!

SOUTH AFRICA

LIVED

1903

IVED a woman wonderful,
(May the Lord amend her!)
Neither simple, kind, nor true,
But her Pagan beauty drew
Christian gentlemen a few
Hotly to attend her.

Christian gentlemen a few
From Berwick unto Dover;
For she was South Africa,
And she was South Africa,
She was Our South Africa,
Africa all over!

Half her land was dead with drouth,
Half was red with battle;
She was fenced with fire and sword
Plague on pestilence outpoured,
Locusts on the greening sward
And murrain on the cattle!

True, ah true, and overtrue;
That is why we love her!

For she is South Africa,
And she is South Africa,

She is Our South Africa,
Africa all over!

Bitter hard her lovers toiled,

Scandalous their payment,Food forgot on trains derailed; Cattle-dung where fuel failed; Water where the mules had staled;

And sackcloth for their raiment!

THE BURIAL

1902

(C. J. Rhodes, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902)

WHEN that great Kings return to clay,

Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,

Because its creature died.

But we- we reckon not with those
Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led
Beyond our guess or reach,
The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.

So huge the all-mastering thought that drove
So brief the term allowed-

Nations, not words, he linked to prove

His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won

The granite of the ancient North-
Great spaces washed with sun.
There shall he patient take his seat
(As when the Death he dared),

And there await a people's feet

In the paths that he prepared.

There, till the vision he foresaw
Splendid and whole arise,
And unimagined Empires draw
To council 'neath his skies,

The immense and brooding Spirit still
Shall quicken and control.

Living he was the land, and dead,
His soul shall be her soul!

1

THE SETTLER

1903

(Peace, May, 1902)

HERE, where my fresh-turned furrows run,

And the deep soil glistens red,
I will repair the wrong that was done
To the living and the dead.
Here, where the senseless bullet fell,
And the barren shrapnel burst,
I will plant a tree, I will dig a well,
Against the heat and the thirst.

Here, in a large and a sunlit land,
Where no wrong bites to the bone,
I will lay my hand in my neighbour's hand,
And together we will atone

For the set folly and the red breach
And the black waste of it all,

Giving and taking counsel each
Over the cattle-kraal.

Here will we join against our foes-
The hailstroke and the storm,

And the red and rustling cloud that blows
The locust's mile-deep swarm;
Frost and murrain and floods let loose
Shall launch us side by side

In the holy wars that have no truce
"Twixt seed and harvest tide.