“Hand to the labour!—heart and hand!
Our sons shall inherit an altered land:
Harvests shall wave o’er the virgin soil,
Cottages stand, and gardens smile,
And the songs of our children the hours beguile,
’Mid Afric’s Southern Wilds.
“Make we the pride of the forest yield;
Wrest from the wilderness field on field;
And to brighten our hope, and lighten our care,
And gain the aid of our Father there,
Raise we to heaven the voice of prayer
From Afric’s Southern Wilds.”
. . . . . . . . . .
The locust clouds have darkened heaven;
The “rusted” fields to the flame are given:
The war-cry is echoing wild and loud;
For the war of the savage, fierce and proud,
Has burst like the storm from the thunder-cloud
On Afric’s Southern Wilds.
“Never despair, though the harvests fail;
Though the hosts of a savage foe assail;
Never despair; we shall conquer yet,
And the toils of our earlier years forget
In hope’s bright glory our sun shall set
’Midst Afric’s Southern Wilds.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Our toilworn fathers are sinking to rest;
But their children inherit their hope’s bequest.
Valleys are smiling in harvest pride;
There are fleecy flocks on the mountain side;
Cities are rising to stud the plains;
The life-blood of commerce is coursing the veins
Of a new-born Empire, that grows and reigns
Over Afric’s Southern Wilds.
Rev. H. H. Dugmore.
April 10, 1861.
A SOUTH AFRICAN WILDERNESS.
The wilderness! The wilderness! It stretches wide and drear,
As I stand amidst its solitudes with no companion near:
I watch the vulture sailing as he circles in the sky,
The ostrich stalking o’er the wilds—the springbok bounding by.
The wilderness! The wilderness! ’Tis where the lion roars;
And whence the wasting locust-flood its living torrent pours:
With rushing ruin on their wings, its myriad myriads sweep,
Like waters from the mountains, or the surges of the deep.
The wilderness! The wilderness! The desert blast is there;
And the sun sends down his fiery rays with fierce and blinding glare.
’Tis there the infant whirlwinds their new-born vigour try;
And spiral columns o’er the waste rise circling to the sky.