"And tears and toil have been my lot Since I the White Man's thrall became, And sorer griefs I wish forgot
Harsh blows, and scorn, and shame! Oh, Englishman! thou ne'er canst know 'The injured bondman's bitter woe,
When round his breast, like scorpions, cling Black thoughts that madden while they sting!
"Yet this hard fate I might have borne, And taught in time my soul to bend, Had my sad yearning heart forlorn
But found a single friend:
My race extinct or far removed,
The Boor's rough brood I could have loved;
But each to whom my bosom turned
Even like a hound the black boy spurned.
"While, friendless thus, my master's flocks I tended on the upland waste,
It chanced this fawn leapt from the rocks,
By wolfish wild-dogs chased:
I rescued it, though wounded sore
And dabbled in its mother's gore:
And nursed it in a cavern wild,
Until it loved me like a child.
"Gently I nursed it; for I thought (Its hapless fate so like to mine)
By good Uтíko it was brought
To bid me not repine,—
Since in this world of wrong and ill
One creature lived that loved me still,
Although its dark and dazzling eye
Beamed not with human sympathy.
"Thus lived I, a lone orphan lad,
My task the proud Boor's flocks to tend;
And this poor fawn was all I had
To love or call my friend;
When suddenly, with haughty look
And taunting words, that tyrant took
My playmate for his pampered boy,
Who envied me my only joy.
"High swelled my heart!-But when the star Of midnight gleamed, I softly led My bounding favorite forth, and far
And here, from human kind exiled,
Three moons on roots and berries wild
I've fared; and braved the beasts of prey,
To 'scape from spoilers worse than they.
"But yester morn a Bushman brought
The tidings that thy tents were near; And now with hasty foot I've sought
Thy presence, void of fear;
Because they say, O English Chief,
Thou scornest not the Captive's grief:
Then let me serve thee, as thine own-
For I am in the world alone!"
Such was Marossi's touching tale.
Our breasts they were not made of stone;
His words, his winning looks prevail-
We took him for "our own."
And One, with woman's gentle art
Unlocked the fountains of his heart;
And love gushed forth-till he became
Her Child in everything but name.
AFAR in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And shadows of things that have long since fled.
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead:
Bright visions of glory-that vanished too soon;
Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments-by fate or by falsehood reft;
Companions of early days-lost or left;
And my Native Land-whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;
The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young and the world was new.
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All-all now forsaken-forgotten-foregone!
And I-a lone exile remembered of none-
My high aims abandoned,--my good acts undone,—
Aweary of all that is under the sun,-
With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the Desert afar from man!
Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption and strife-
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear,—
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear,-
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh-
Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the Desert alone to ride!
There is rapture to vault on the champing steed, And to bound away with the eagle's speed, With the death-fraught firelock in my handThe only law of the Desert Land!
Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
Away-away from the dwellings of men,
By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;
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