Classic Poem

It has flowered — fragrant joy —
First Cape rose to scent the sun!
Rapture of a toddling boy
When he sees a bubble spun
From a straw — a prismy sphere
Sailing in the sunlit air —

Fills the Governor of the land
When he sees the flower bloom
He had planted with his hand,
Tended it in joy and gloom,
Guarded it with jealous eye
From amber beetle, emerald fly.

As he gazes, thoughts fly free
To his distant Holland home,
Far across the desert sea —
Flecked with lilied founts of foam —
There where guelder-roses blow,
And the gaudy tulips glow:

Homeland scenes before him spread:
Maidens in frilled caps he sees,
Curly gables, roofs of red,
Dykes, canals and crowded quays,
Crawling barges, windmills, wells,
Belfries with slow-chiming bells.

And he dreams in that dim hour,
Free awhile from care's eclipse,
Mindless of the building tower,
Victualling of passing ships,
Of the enemy that waits
In the woods beyond the gates.

Dreaming on, his musing eye
Sees the mountain loved so well,
Sees its robes of wizardry
Pierced by dawn's red shot and shell —
With a sigh he turns away
To the labours of the day.


Then that flower newly born,
Gazing round with wondering eye,
Saw the quickly coming morn
Radiant in earth and sky,
Saw upon the mountain steep,
Flocks of mist like feeding sheep.

Saw bright-tinted butterflies,
Flitting sunbirds rainbow-winged,
Lustrous sprews with scarlet eyes,
Speckled cobras, adders ringed,
Boomslangs that shot noiselessly
Arrow-like from tree to tree:

These it saw and many more,
Heard, with fearful quakes and thrills,
In the night the lion's roar
Echoing among the hills,
Heard the river-horses snort
In the pools beyond the fort.

Thus was born the first Cape rose
Nigh three hundred years ago —
Lyric in a book of prose,
Lone star on a mountain's brow —
Countless roses since that one
Have enshrined our southern sun.