THE CORANNA.
Fast by his wild resounding river
The listless Córan lingers ever;
Still drives his heifers forth to feed,
Soothed by the gorrah’s humming reed;[4]
A rover still unchecked will range,
As humour calls, or seasons change;
His tent of mats and leathern gear
All packed upon the patient steer.
’Mid all his wanderings hating toil,
He never tills the stubborn soil;
But on the milky dams relies,
And what spontaneous earth supplies.
Should some long parching droughts prevail,
And milk and bulbs and locusts fail,
He lays him down to sleep away
In languid trance the weary day;
Oft as he feels gaunt hunger’s stound,[5]
Still tightening famine’s girdle round;
Lulled by the sound of the Gareep,
Beneath the willows murmuring deep:
Till thunder-clouds surcharged with rain,
Pour verdure o’er the panting plain;
And call the famished dreamer from his trance,
To feast on milk and game, and wake the moonlight dance.
Thomas Pringle.
SONG OF THE WILD BUSHMAN.
Let the proud white man boast his flocks,
And fields of foodful grain;
My home is ’mid the mountain rocks,
The desert my domain.
I plant no herbs nor pleasant fruits,
I toil not for my cheer;
The desert yields me juicy roots,
And herds of bounding deer.
The countless springboks are my flock,
Spread o’er the unbounded plain;
The buffalo bendeth to my yoke,
The wild horse to my rein;[6]
My yoke is the quivering assegai,
My rein the tough bow-string;
My bridle curb a slender barb—
Yet it quells the forest king.
The crested adder honoureth me,
And yields at my command
His poison bag, like the honey-bee,
When I seize him on the sand.
Yea, even the wasting locust-swarm,
Which mighty nations dread,
To me nor terror brings, nor harm—
For I make of them my bread.[7]
Thus I am lord of the Desert Land,
And I will not leave my bounds,
To crouch beneath the Christian’s hand,
And kennel with his hounds:
To be a hound, and watch the flocks,
For the cruel white man’s gain—
No! the brown Serpent of the Rocks
His den doth yet retain;
And none who there his stings provokes
Shall find his poison vain!