Classic Poem

You dales and downs of Albany,
On your curved slopes, like scattered sheep,
Grey rocks and lichened boulders lie
Half-hidden in the grass and sleep,
Sun-washed, serene, in breathless ease.
In your deep kloofs are ancient trees,
Grey yellow-woods, whose creaking breath
Is spent in droning songs of death —
Dim and unending threnodies.
Oft in such grove a kaffir-boom
Flaunts gaily many a flame-like plume,
And perforates the woodland-gloom,
As veld-fires slash the fur of night
Making it bleed with angry light.
Green dales and downs of Albany,
Sadly, to you I bid, Good-bye.

" Good-bye to you, fair frontier town,
Whose white-walled houses, churches brown,
Glow from a cup-like vale rimmed round
By gentle hills. In you I found
Friendship and love. At first success
Came with full hands to hail and bless:
Drought-like misfortune followed fast
Blighting the blooms too bright to last;
So now, once more, though weary age
Brings its dull load, I must engage
In other ventures, start again
Far from these pleasant haunts of men.
And so, farewell, proud frontier-town;
Farewell again to dale and down.

" For I was born a restless man,
Just as the sea — since time began —
Drives on, with angry clap and roar,
Its white teams on an endless shore
And never pauses to outspan.
Yes, restless as the winds that shake
Soft, yellow spangles from the thorn,
Or as the gold-pronged clouds that rake.
The sun-ploughed hills when day is born;
And restless as the wild-colt rills,
That race among the resting hills.
— But I must curb this restlessness,
And in the vast veld seek redress
For town-misfortune, town-distress:
There, maybe, I shall find the balm
That men have dreamed of, which is — calm."