Classic Poem

INTRODUCTORY STANZAS

Sweet Teviot, fare thee well! Less gentle themes
Far distant call me from thy pastoral dale,
To climes where Amakosa's woods and streams
Invite, in the fair South, my venturous sail.
There roaming sad the solitary vale,
From native haunts and early friends exiled,
I tune no more the string for Scottish tale;
For to my aching heart, in accents wild,
Appeals the bitter cry of Afric's race reviled.

From Keissi's meads, from Chumi's hoary woods,
Bleak Tarka's dens, and Stormberg's rugged fells,
To where Gareep pours down his sounding floods
Through regions where the hunted Bushman dwells.
That bitter cry wide o'er the desert swells,
And, like a spirit's voice, demands the song
That of these savage haunts the story tells —
A tale of foul oppression, fraud and wrong,
By Afric's sons endured from Christian Europe long.

Adieu, ye lays to youthful fancy dear!
Let darker scenes a sterner verse inspire,
While I attune to strains that tyrants fear
The deeper murmurs of the British lyre, —
And from a holier altar ask the fire
To point the indignant line with heavenly light,
(Though soon again in darkness to expire,)
That it oppression's cruel pride may blight,
By flashing T RUTH'S full blaze on deeds long hid in night!