Boer War Lyrics

by Louis Selmer

GREATNESS.

O, thou, the fierce englamored,
Hence, at never cease, invoked of man,
Who, in the vast procession of the sybil days,
Holds up the light he fain would follow, but may not conceive;
Whose boundless charter and whose nameless goal outpasseth Time:—
Hast thou, on sufferance of thy liege, the Truth
The Same, unwearied on whose fiat waits the mutinous Dark,
Whose breath, withal, fans bright the spheres,
Concords the music of their millioned primes;
Whose utter Essence, tho’ in substance clad,
Yon skies contain not, tho’ the heart may hold:—
Hast thou, the warrant winked-at, yet the trust, supreme,
On behalf of privilege that might all beseech—
Some love past limit, save its ever self—
Hast thou, thus, wandered from those shores afar,
Thy starry synods and the hosting lights,
To meet thine image in these mortal ways,
So fangled, paltried, and so bitter small—
Thine mighty image, which no shadow frets—
Such slave to glozing aspect and rude things of Here,
So pent in durance to the marble law, whose
nurse are grim coercion and the bloody hand?
But, shalt thou not change it, till its lines enlarge,
False take-offs dwindle, and their craft stand out,
Nor mate vain-glory for vile thrift of both,
And fierce engendering of their dwarfish breed?
Shalt thou not change it, let Fame’s note come true;
For her brazen trumpet the small silvery flute,
Which draws its heart-strains from the pith of Just,
And winds accordant with the patient soul?
Shall its gloried flame not whiter burn,
The snuff and dross attract no more,
Set lurid off thy streaming torch,
Whose glow and essence than the sun-paths fed,
Outpeers the lustre of their myriad fount,
The solemn, fiery-bearing, the uncompassed Night?

Yea, shalt thou not change it, bid thine features grow,
The lines more matching, scope and plan more true,
Dispel refraction and all hemming False,
Which, girt with mortal tribulation, hang
Their warping shadows twixt the Light and thee?
Shall Great be greater not, tho’ it lowly comes,
The reward o’ertook not ere the Right say well?
Shalt thou sink hellward not the sorry law,
Which bids rude Strength—be it brain, or brawn’s—
Sit, lofty scorning, by the counseling heart,
So unaccompanied place its monstrous tribute at vain
Feet of pride, and brutish idols of the adoring sense,
On specious plea of covetous ambition—all its rage to have and wield—
Give wage to sorrow than be frankly served
By lasting wisdom and the patient hope,
While Policy and Smug Expedience wink Fresh Cues at all?

Shall thy fair likeness not refigured speak,
Each trait come moulded t’ward this crowning True—
That, Mind, the mightiest, shall outsee itself,
No gift, not servant, round more full the Soul,
Nor in the bounteous equipment find
The meanest haughty crest, nay tricksiest spur upon that crest,
Whereon to hang the damned assurance of a law
Exempting answer to the gauging Just;
But from the grace and undeserved oblation draw,
Bring heavenly down—whether in man or men,
In gathered Nations, or the singler few—
Fresh-purposed to the will, fresh trusting
And sustaining there, the guardian angel of humility,
The lifting spirit of the thankful heart?

Shalt thou not make it goodly clear,
’Tis not Endeavor which alone achieves,
Save as it aim averts not, but for grace upholds,
Crowns true some spirit, would set struggling forth,
At vast contention and in emulous pride,
Yon speechless comment which the Hopes give out,
For fresh construction of the rigid text,
The nice enactment, tho’ dispiteous code,
Whose leased expression and whose outward sum
Are Nature’s equities and ways about?

Ay, shall thus, fresh copied not, thine image shine;
Shalt thou not thus acquit thyself, re-message Faith,
The act affirm her, and the daily thought,
Full-knowing that her life lies there, and only hostage unto groping man?
Shalt thou not thus draw gracious near,
Till all hearts enfold thee, and, in their rude despite,
The scoring Fates cry wondering out,
“Our worst is done; there is now no more;
Our record writes itself, to justice dedicate
And happy Good.”
If not—alas, misprision and the futile trust!
If not—if Destiny still a boggler stand,
Knows Hence from Hither, nor which way were best,
If yet the rude purveyor, Time,
Finds in the vast commission and despatch of him,
In his prospects and his comings-on,
The near or far, unfeatured still that dream of thee,
No Perfect ever, scarce thy better there,
But that blots shall lasting stain it, give it
Fresh relief, traduce the glory he had meant
Hold forth; if yet the Vain come worshipped,
And the Brute must thrive, more subtly nourished,
But its breed the same, while the Free,
Tho’ of outward credit, wear a golden clog,
Pollutes his title, and defaults the heart:
In few, if Fact be consecrate, the Brain its God,
No Faith to hallow, save what Reason hold,
Rank-rooting never in no soil but Self,
Till Hope, an exile—say she breathe at all—
Strangered and out of rights, eats her own heart,
In weary banishment and quail of man:—
If this be so, if that could be—were it better not,
Thus tricked and thwarted of thy clearer self,
This Present, pathless, with worse maze before—
Were it better not, white days should cease them,
And the Stars to roll, invite disruption, and, thro’ wrack
Of things, with leveling Chaos plead afresh some chance
For nobler being and the worthier life?
Or, say, that doubting vastly his at all retrieve,
Since still petitioned on crude lines of This,
Grudged, narrowed, and beset with voidless happenings of the mortal hour:
Say that:
Hence, judging nothing blessed that he might contrive,
And, lest things that had been from their graves stand forth,
Teem their once imperfections, all infirm they bore,
Yea, on mere vision of the dread event,
Cry wildly out against the Call,
That, taunting, drew them from Death’s perfect shade,
To stalk once more, at dull repeat,
Or fevered rush—one goal for both—
Their weary paces in some time-bound Here,
Its hope unpremised, and no Hence made out:
Say that—all that—and, were it better not, were it not wise,
If yet so judging from what lay at hand,
Such guess to go by and provide a cue—
Were it better not, were it not well,
Might faith not do it, and the sense subscribe,
Let it come to this, if words may broach it,
May bear out the thought: to this—that man call down,
Call clamorous down, as only umpire twixt
All What and Not; twixt blind Reliance—
Her yet remnant there—her fond contention,
And the crucial Fact; as sole unraveler
Of thick webs of False; for lasting clearance
Of the perjured Fates, that usurp thin image
To the trick of True—Call wildly down,
All hearts clean emptied of their bane, the pride—
If Miracle knew how; might holily, not grossly, do it—
No breather left not, whom the riddance bore
Not in its sorry and unhallowed stead—
Crude absence presenced, and new light let in—
Some sacred, lofty, and prophetic strain,
Which so should dare it, and,
Which, curb to Fear, did dread no Judgment,
Not appealed with this—that each cause that
Drew him, and each star that led,
Must find him shelter, nay, close-challenged, stand
His clear accessory before the fact,
Like found, in common, with indicted man:—
Which so should dare—
All this premise yielded, and its case at rest—
Call fondly down,
While the infinite Mercies, sitting wide ’bove All,
Did, scruteless Justicers, take up the claim,
Which Pain and Sorrow for the world-heart draws,
And, which, past all precedent, would thus call down—
Ere Grace pronounce it, ere its fiat fall,
Against some boundless Issue, some yet Pure toward,
Unstained, surely, by gross touch of him,
Man’s wayward intimate, sore licensed Time,
For his purgation and clear suit of all—
Would dare call down—yea, righteous down—
All breathers joining, of a mind for once,
Accord achieved, and a truce at last,
No thought so common, nor no wish so near
As that this scene be halted, and the long act done,
Its show a burden, and its flaunt a woe,—
Call fondly, wildly, tho’ how vainly, down,
The long remitted, yet etern withheld,
While boundless Loving by great Patience sits—
Twin-seed and concept of the boweled Ruth,
That, sainting, quickens to immaculate God—
Would yet call down, call monstrous down,
The infinite respited, his aye unushered
And unthundered Doom?

PETER CRONJE.
Paardeberg, Feb., 1900.

Unto the templed haunts of her that sits,
And to acclaim of echoes writes the stirring deeds of men—
Each noisy plaudit that reverberate flits
Across the tablet’s white, to never lift its breath again.

Each solemn impress, too, the burin graves,
And clear and fast, to living strokes, the stone-page holds
’Gainst his rude blot whose gulf enwaves
With sweeping crest all flash and strain of baser moulds.