Yet, ere my spirit wings its flight
Unto Death’s silent shadowy clime,
Utíko! Lord of life and light,
Who, high above the clouds of Time,
Calm sittest, where yon hosts sublime
Of stars wheel round thy bright abode,
Oh, let my cry unto thee climb,
Of every race the Father-God!
I ask not judgments from thy hand—
Destroying hail or parching drought,
Or locust swarms to waste the land,
Or pestilence, by Famine brought;
I say the prayer Jankanna[9] taught,
Who wept for Amakósa’s wrongs—
“Thy kingdom come—Thy will be wrought—
For unto Thee all power belongs.”
Thy kingdom come! Let Light and Grace
Throughout all lands in triumph go;
Till pride and strife to love give place,
And blood and tears forget to flow;
Till Europe mourn for Afric’s woe,
And o’er the deep her arms extend
To lift her where she lieth low,
And prove indeed her Christian Friend!
Thomas Pringle.
THE BROWN HUNTER’S SONG.
Under the Didima[10] lies a green dell,
Where fresh from the forest the blue waters swell;
And fast by that brook stands a yellow-wood tree
Which shelters the spot which is dearest to me.
Down by the streamlet my heifers are grazing;
In the pool of the guanas the herd-boy is gazing;
Under the shade my amana is singing—
The shade of the tree where her cradle is swinging.
When I come from the upland as daylight is fading,
Though spent with the chase, and the game for my lading,
My nerves are new-strung and my fond heart is swelling
As I gaze from the cliff on our wood-circled dwelling.
Down the steep mountain and through the brown forest,
I haste like a hart when his thirst is the sorest;
I bound o’er the swift brook that skirts the savannah,
And clasp my first-born in the arms of Amana.