| |
| AFAR in the desert I love to ride, | |
| With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: | |
| When the sorrows of life the soul o’ercast, | |
| And, sick of the present, I cling to the past; | |
| When the eye is suffused with regretful tears, | 5 |
| From the fond recollections of former years; | |
| And shadows of things that have long since fled | |
| Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,— | |
| Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon; | |
| Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood’s noon; | 10 |
| Attachments by fate or falsehood reft; | |
| Companions of early days lost or left; | |
| And my native land, whose magical name | |
| Thrills to the heart like electric flame; | |
| The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; | 15 |
| All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time | |
| When the feelings were young, and the world was new, | |
| Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view; | |
| All, all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone! | |
| And I, a lone exile remembered of none, | 20 |
| My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone, | |
| Aweary of all that is under the sun,— | |
| With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, | |
| I fly to the desert afar from man. | |
| |
| Afar in the desert I love to ride, | 25 |
| With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side! | |
| When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, | |
| With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife, | |
| The proud man’s frown, and the base man’s fear, | |
| The scorner’s laugh, and the sufferer’s tear, | 30 |
| And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, | |
| Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy; | |
| When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high, | |
| And my soul is sick with the bondman’s sigh,— | |
| O, then there is freedom, and joy, and pride, | 35 |
| Afar in the desert alone to ride! | |
| There is rapture to vault on the champing steed, | |
| And to bound away with the eagle’s speed, | |
| With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,— | |
| The only law of the Desert Land! | 40 |
| |
| Afar in the desert I love to ride, | |
| With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, | |
| Away, away from the dwellings of men, | |
| By the wild deer’s haunt, by the buffalo’s glen; | |
| By valleys remote where the oribi plays, | 45 |
| Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartèbeest graze, | |
| And the kudu and eland unhunted recline | |
| By the skirts of gray forest o’erhung with wild vine; | |
| Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, | |
| And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, | 50 |
| And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will | |
| In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill. | |
| |
| Afar in the desert I love to ride, | |
| With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, | |
| O’er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry | 55 |
| Of the springbok’s fawn sounds plaintively; | |
| And the timorous quagga’s shrill whistling neigh | |
| Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; | |
| Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane, | |
| With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; | 60 |
| And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste | |
| Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, | |
| Hieing away to the home of her rest, | |
| Where she and her mate have scooped their nest, | |
| Far hid from the pitiless plunderer’s view | 65 |
| In the pathless depths of the parched karroo. | |
| |
| Afar in the desert I love to ride, | |
| With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side, | |
| Away, away, in the wilderness vast | |
| Where the white man’s foot hath never passed, | 70 |
| And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan | |
| Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan,— | |
| A region of emptiness, howling and drear, | |
| Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear; | |
| Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, | 75 |
| With the twilight bat from the yawning stone; | |
| Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, | |
| Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot; | |
| And the bitter-melon, for food and drink, | |
| Is the pilgrim’s fare by the salt lake’s brink; | 80 |
| A region of drought, where no river glides, | |
| Nor rippling brook with osiered sides; | |
| Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount, | |
| Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount, | |
| Appears, to refresh the aching eye; | 85 |
| But the barren earth and the burning sky, | |
| And the blank horizon, round and round, | |
| Spread,—void of living sight or sound. | |
| And here, while the night-winds round me sigh, | |
| And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, | 90 |
| As I sit apart by the desert stone, | |
| Like Elijah at Horeb’s cave, alone, | |
| “A still small voice” comes through the wild | |
| (Like a father consoling his fretful child), | |
| Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, | 95 |
| Saying,—Man is distant, but God is near! | |
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