Your little stars and your crescent moon.
I am tired and thin,
I think I shall come and see you soon.
May I come in, may I come in?

The Transvaal in June

Under the deep blue vault
Of a hot relentless sky,
Burns the hot red deep, and the hot red road,
And the choking dust like a rust corrode
Soars up in spirals high.

Under the sun-gilt span
Of a hot and brazen sky,
Cries the thirsty drift for a summer rain,
Baring its naked stones in vain
And its mud in misery.

Under the cloudless curve
Of a wide remorseless sky
Sleeps the patchy scrub of the sweeping veld
And the slim blue gums, and the wattle belt
Where the shrike broods watchfully.

Under the sullen glare
Of the grim unblinking sky
The hot dorp pants, the red roofs daze,
The mule tracks scorch, the iron-stones blaze
In their sun-struck agony.

Johannesburg

Miraculous city!
Thoughts stupendous to crush the wise,
Buildings monstrous which brush the skies!
Raise your eyes
In awe. Yet pity
This marvellous, golden, mushroom city.

Hear the roar!
Like the moan of the sea, when the wave curls back
From the granite rock which whirls it back,
A great unceasingly grinding drone
In a heavy unyielding monotone.
'Tis the frenzied wail of the lost in pain,
The shriek of the damned raised in vain,
Again! again!
And the stamping machine with a brutal joy
Wrenches the gold from its quartz alloy,
Crushing the tortured stone to dust
As it yields the ore
To the vast unquenchable thirst for lust.

_Feel_ the south wind!
As it sweeps the veld with its icy breath,
Biting the scrub with its teeth of death,
lifting the dust like a phantom shroud
From the tailing heaps, in a veil of cloud.
Scattering the belching smoke, which flies
From the chimney line that marks the rise
Of the Main Reef ridge.
Some devil's bridge
To bind the town to the broad full plain
Which rolls beyond, like the boundless main.

Precocious town!
The forward child of a youthful state
So young in years. So rich, so great
In gilt renown,
And glittering fate!
Oh! ponder deep, all ye! Yet pity
This marvellous, golden, old-young city!

In the Land of the Silences

She stood before the tent, a winging tent
In thickne