  There is a land, unknown to fame, A land whose heroes have no name In the grey records of past age; Unchronicled in hist’ry’s page, Untamed by art, yet wild and free, That land lies in the Southern sea— It laughs to heav’n which smiles on it; There midway in wild waters set, With suns serene and balmier breeze Than ever swept these northern seas, Its beetling crags rise vast, and war With oceans, meeting from afar, To break their billows on its shore, With fearful never-ending roar. Bold mariners who sailed of old Through unknown seas in search of gold, Saw those dark rocks, those giant forms, And, fear-quelled, named them “Cape of Storms.” O land of storms, I pine to hear That music which made others fear; I long to hear the fierce winds howl, Hot with fell fires, across thy plains. Thou glorious land! where Nature reigns Supreme in awful loveliness, O shall thy exiled son not bless Those hills and dales of thine, where first He roamed a careless child; where burst Thy tropic splendour on his eye; Where days were spent, whose mem’ries lie Deep ’neath all afterthought and care, Yet rise more buoyant than the air, And float o’er all his days? O home Of beauty rare, where I did roam In childhood’s golden days, my pray’r For thee soars through this northern air. Land of “Good Hope!” thy future lies Bright ’fore my vision as thy skies! O Africa! long lost in night, Upon the horizon gleams the light Of breaking dawn. Thy star of fame Shall rise and brightly gleam; thy name Shall blaze on hist’ry’s later page; Thy birth-time is the last great age; Thy name has been, slave of the world; But, when thy banner is unfurled, Triumphant Liberty shall wave That standard o’er foul slav’ry’s grave, And earth—decaying earth—shall see Her freest, fairest child in thee! William Rodger Thomson. Utrecht, 1856. |
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