Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction, Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire. - Roy Campbell

The timeless, surly patience of the serf
That moves the nearest to the naked earth
And ploughs down palaces, and thrones, and towers.

South Africa, renowned both far and wide
For politics and little else beside.

We shall not meet again: over the wave
Our ways divide, and yours is straight and endless –
But mine is short and crooked to the grave:
Yet what of these dark crowds, amid whose flow
I battle like a rock, aloof and friendless –
Are not their generations, vague and endless,
The waves, the strides, the feet on which I go?