Classic Poem

Between the tufts of ragged grasses
The tawny Shumba peers and passes;
By stream and thorn and rounded boulder,
By ridge and krantz and star-lit shoulder—
Shumba the Terrible is out today
To see what strength and stealth may slay.

Old Kamba' draws his head to safety,
A black toc-tockie, naively crafty,
Rolls over with his feet on high
As Shumba the Slayer shambles by.

Inyassa, nibbling sars'parilla,
Dives for the wild … the old tusked tiller
Of other's fields, the thief, Gurnwi,
Charges the thorn scrub, dense and dewy.

But down the road a man came walking;
The voices of All the Past were talking,
For his wife was coming to town that day
To greet her man for the years away.

By stream and store and wheel-scarred boulder—
By ridge and vlei and star-lit shoulder
He dropped his sins and the miles behind
For a glimpse of the gentle eyes and kind.

A shadow bunched beside a stone …
The man comes on alone—alone!
And a mighty silence fell around
On leaf and blade and the sun-baked ground:
You could not hear the dry dust fall
In the rain-rent spruit, nor a night-bird call,
Nor pad of Tika or Jackalas—
Nor the white ants toil in the withered grass.
In the dark the man came swift along
And raised his voice to sing a song:

‘Sweet Love, thy memories flood again—
‘Fragrant, tremendous! Wind and rain
‘Sing of thee—sing! And the stars above
‘Sing of thee, Lover, and thee, O Love.
‘And thou art greater than rain and wind,
‘And deeper than hearts that fought and sinned.
‘The stars are nought beside thy eyes
‘Wherein the dreams of Time arise.
‘—The years have sought to part us two,
‘Which never the years nor the miles could do!
‘Death—Death himself is as naught in this
‘For Love dies not, and the least love-kiss
‘Lives on in the old eternal sun …’

The shadow leaped … and the song was done.