‘W HAT went ye out for to see?’ Lands flowing with milk and with honey—
Flashing with flowers and fountains? ‘What went ye out for to see?’
League upon listless league of scrub, sad-coloured and stunted,
Broken by stone-crowned koppies—isles in a motionless sea:
League upon league of brown earth, monotonous, vast as the ocean,
Guarded by stone-crowned koppies—sentinels sleepless and grim.
Here, when at noontide the sun chastises the plain in his anger,
Heat-rays flicker aloft, like chaff from a winnowing-floor;
Glittering heat-waves leap, like spray that is tossed by the surges,
Leaping they shiver and sparkle silently flooding the plains:
Tortured, the wilderness swoons to the basilisk eye of the sun-god—
Quivering, breathless and bare, sapped of all colour and shade.