ODE ON THE BRITISH SETTLERS’ YEAR OF JUBILEE.
NAM QUI HŒC DICUNT, PALAM OSTENDUNT SE PATRIAM QUŒRERE.
Epoch of hope! Auspicious year;
Our pride to see;
Hail to thy bright eventful advent here—
Grand Jubilee!
Since on these shores—our lot was cast,
Of years, seven Sabbaths number with the past;
Thy dawn, O sacred year! proclaim we now at last.
Chime for the Settlers’ Jubilee,—
Spire, turret, fane!
Resound abroad, with quickening ecstasy,
The proud refrain.
Late, by the Gospel-trumpet called—
O Africa! in Satan’s bondage galled,
Shout for the Jubilee, with spirit disenthralled.
Kloof, table-land, and peak sublime,
Take up the peal;
Chide o’er this wondrous, Heaven-acknowledged clime,
Man’s flagging zeal.
From that far bound, where hope first rose
On Lusitanian Vasco’s gathering woes,
To regions far beyond—where Transvaal Jordan flows.
How vast in prospect, mortal man,
One Spring appears!
In retrospect, how limited the span
Of fifty years!
Yet gaze around,—how few remain,
Who, in this land, first shared our joy or pain!
Nor doubt we, honoured dead, our loss has been your gain.
Shamgars and Jairs! our heroes true,
Your types of yore
Gain not by fair comparison with you,
In heaven-sent lore.
No chief, on Seir’s, or Bochim’s brow,
Not Gera’s son, nor him of “the rash vow,”
In zeal, for cause of right—transcends your glory now.
Your god-like clemency to life,
In conflicts fell;
The Zeebs and Orebs of each mortal strife,
Survive to tell.
The ruthless hand, with dagger bared,
In hour of conquest, by your mercy spared,
Has since, as that of friend, your love and bounty shared.
Far better learned your skill to pierce
The forest King;
Transfix grim Isgram, or the tiger fierce,
In his death-spring.
Like Kabzeel’s Worthy who could dare,
In time of snow, to savage haunts repair,
And slay the monster huge, e’en in his gory lair.
Not gold but prowess then was fame,
Throughout this land;
True stalwart valour was the test of claim
To Beauty’s hand.
What marvel to acquire such bays,
Each tried to emulate his fellow’s praise?
Oh, there were mighty men,—yea, “giants in those days”—