Classic Poem

White race, around this half-won land
Your slender chain is flung,
Whether from Holland's sea-swept strand
Your ancient stock is sprung;
Whether the records of your line
Proclaim the Huguenot;
Or whether, bearing Britain's sign,
From teeming towns by Clyde or Tyne
Ye come as overflow: —

Full often will your thoughts leap back
To catch the older charm,
The busy street, the rustic track,
The sea-port, or the farm.
Yet let not misty memories press
Too close upon the brow;
Let them be dear — yet none the less
Turn mind and heart to raise and bless
The land that holds you now.

Let the swart tribes that round you fare
Live scatheless and apart.
Do ye, white workers, fearless share
The tasks of mine and mart.
The men who sailed, and found, and fought,
They too can delve and build,
And carve the image of their thought,
And raise again the soul that wrought
In every ancient guild.

The mountain-barrier and the plain
Have no mean limits here;
Wide-sweeping as the boundless main
Our vast half-hemisphere.
From Durban to the Orange shore
One face the veld-land wears,
Whose silent spaces all implore
One master-race to mould it more,
And love to call it theirs.

But not as British, not as Dutch
Shall that race speak and think.
The soil itself is like a touch
Of feeling, and a link.
By Weenen of the weeping night,
On Isandhlwana's hill,
Yea, and in dark Colenso's fight,
Lie men who now might rede us right,
Had we the hearer's skill.

Perish the feuds that mar and clash!
Let this new nation rise,
Unfettered as the summer flash
In Afric's midnight skies;
Breathing the wind that sweeps at will
This great blue southern dome;
Fearless of war, yet keener still
To bridge the drift, and mine the hill,
And lead the harvest home.

So from the Cape that boldly rounds
Our southward continent,
Up to the mighty " smoke that sounds"
O'er canons cleft and rent,
By tended stream, no longer dry,
By coal-bed and by well,
Far as the plains that round them lie
With space and height for purpose high,
The Great White Race shall dwell!