The gentle hind and dappled fawn
Are coming up the glade;

Each harmless furr'd and feather'd thing

Is glad, and not afraid-
But on my sadden'd spirit still
The Shadow leaves a shade:

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed Tree,
Within whose rugged bark

This warm and living frame shall find
Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic Tree which breathed to me

A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground

Within that shady Avenue,

Where lofty Elms abound.

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;
And my Native Land, whose magical name
Thrills to my 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 hand,-
The 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 ;

By valleys remote, where the Oribi plays,

Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartèbeest graze, And the kùdù and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of grey forests o'erhung with wild vine; Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will

In the fen where the wild-ass is drinking his fill.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight grey;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scoop'd their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view

In the pathless depths of the parch'd Karroo.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
Away, away in the Wilderness vast

Where the White Man's foot hath never pass'd,

And the quiver'd Coránna or Bechuan
Hath rarely cross'd with his roving clan:

A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

Which Man hath abandon'd from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;

And the bitter melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink:
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread-void of living sight or sound.

And here, while the night winds round me sigh, And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky; As I sit apart by the desert stone,

Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone;

"A still small voice" comes through the wild (Like a father consoling his fretful child), Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, Saying "Man is distant, but GOD is near!"