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Poetry and Sleep
 Poems from South Africa
Published in a South Africa in an anthology 1910
John Runcie
A Slumber Song of the
Public Gardens, Cape Town
" I'se gwine home to Dixie,
I'se gwine no more to wander."
- OLD PLANTATION SONG.
SOFT haze upon the mountain and a haze upon the sea,
High noon above the Gardens and shadows on the
way;
And twenty weary people slipping out of time awee,—
Out of time and out of trouble, on a hot midsummer's day. .
Blow softly, silver trumpets, in a fairy serenade,
Ye lilies of St. Joseph, swinging lightly over-head.
In the shadows of the Gardens the wearied come to rest,
In the spacious dusk and quiet the fevered blood is
stilled;
While sleep, on tiptoe stepping, lays aside the hopeless quest,
Takes away the fag of travel and the promise un-
fulfilled;
In white and gold and purple the wondrous petals
gleam;
In white and gold and purple is the wondrous slope of
dream.
Here be ever Jew and Gentile, Briton, German, Dago, Pole,—
Mostly young and mostly reckless, some unkempt
or liquor-stained;
Here and there a grizzled hobo, or be-painted, draggled
troll;
Here and there an eager seeker for the labour yet
ungained;
Not alone for rank or station may Titania's maidens
bring
Happy dreams of happy Dixie to the people slumbering.
Here's a lad—and ne'er a razor licked the smoothness
of his chin,—
Curly-headed, slim and supple, coiled within a corner
seat,
Worn at heel, and frayed at elbow, blistered foot, and
roughened skin—
God! how far we have to wander for a little bread to
eat!
Puck, who puts on mortal eyelids filmy cobwebs, hither,
quick!
Take the boy across the water, he is ill or mammy-sick.
Fires of life among your ashes, what have ye to give or
gain,
In that haggard shell and ancient, snoring on with
mouth agape?
What among your outworn pleasures hold ye now, and
what remain,
Heartsome still,—a rank old cutty and a little juice
of grape?
Still with these a man may travel to the last foot-weary
mile,
Halting for a dream of Dixie in the garden depths
awhile.
In the mine's untrammelled shanty or Johannesburg
cabouse,
O'er the cards and vicious whisky, men may query in
a jest,
How she struck the trail to Cape Town in her paint and
lacquered shoes,
With her skirts' pathetic draggle, hopeless, weary
like the rest,
Here, within the pure bright Gardens, let the fairy folk
undo
What the mortal folk have made her, for a blissful hour
or two.
Evermore through sun and shadow wafting down upon
the grass,
Takes the dreamers back to Dixie-wheresoever that
may be,—
To the lost hearth and the mother, to the lost youth
and the lass,
Over all the plains and mountains, over all the
leagues of sea:
All roads but lead to quiet, .though the heat and noise
be long,—
Grace for the sleepers, by your leave, and this their
slumber song!
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