Classic Poem

Tameless and fierce and foul were these pygmies, and cunning as serpents,
Callous spawn of the desert, dull to the sting of its sun,
Hunted, with pitiless hate, they crouched among sheltering koppies:
Tortured with famine and thirst, they crawled through the scrub after prey:
Lurking in hidden places—dark crevices, gloom-haunted caverns—
Limned they on rock and on boulder lasting signs of their art:
Brutish were they and unclean, yet—stirred by some glimmer of beauty—
Thirsted to capture in colour the life of a vanishing dream.
Dust are those fugitive pygmies, blown by the winds of the desert,
Crushed and heedlessly trodden 'neath heels of hurrying change:
Hunters and haters of men, their hatred has crumbled to ashes:
Hated of men and hunted, hatred pursues them no more!
Clumsy weapons of stone, rough bows and a handful of arrows—
Relics of hunger and hate—only remain of their lives:
Looming from cavern and krans are inscribed in colours that fade not,
Hints from the heart of their secret—symbols and signs of their dreams.