Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
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:
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:
But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread—void of living sight and sound,
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
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—
Saying—Man is distant, but God is near!
Thomas Pringle.
EVENING RAMBLES.
The sultry summer-noon is past;
And mellow evening comes at last,
With a low and languid breeze
Fanning the mimosa trees,
That cluster o’er the yellow vale,
And oft perfume the panting gale
With fragrance faint; it seems to tell
Of primrose-tufts in Scottish dell,
Peeping forth in tender spring
When the blithe lark begins to sing.
But soon, amidst our Libyan vale,
Such soothing recollections fail;
Soon we raise the eye to range
O’er prospects wild, grotesque, and strange:
Sterile mountains, rough and steep,
That bound abrupt the valley deep,
Heaving to the clear blue sky
Their ribs of granite, bare and dry,
And ridges by the torrents worn,
Thinly streaked with scraggy thorn,
Which fringes nature’s savage dress,
Yet scarce relieves her nakedness.
But where the vale winds deep below
The landscape hath a warmer glow:
There the spekboom spreads its bowers
Of light green leaves and lilac flowers;
And the aloe rears her crimson crest,
Like stately queen for gala drest;
And the bright-blossomed bean-tree shakes
Its coral tufts above the brakes,
Brilliant as the glancing plumes
Of sugar birds among its blooms,
With the deep green verdure bending
In the stream of light descending.
And now along the grassy meads,
Where the skipping reebok feeds,
Let me through the mazes rove
Of the light acacia grove;
Now while yet the honey-bee
Hums around the blossomed tree;
And the turtles softly chide,
Wooingly, on every side;
And the clucking pheasant calls
To his mate at intervals;
And the duiker at my tread
Sudden lifts his startled head,
Then dives affrighted in the brake,
Like wild duck in the reedy lake.
My wonted seat receives me now—
This cliff with myrtle-tufted brow,
Towering high o’er grove and stream,
As if to greet the parting gleam.
With shattered rocks besprinkled o’er,
Behind ascends the mountain hoar,
Whose crest o’erhangs the Bushman’s cave
(His fortress once and now his grave),
Where the grim satyr-faced baboon
Sits gibbering on the rising moon,
Or chides with hoarse and angry cry
The herdsman as he wanders by.
Spread out below in sun and shade,
The shaggy Glen lies full displayed—
Its sheltered nooks, its sylvan bowers,
Its meadows flushed with purple flowers;
And through it like a dragon spread,
I trace the river’s tortuous bed.
