Africa (In Reply To William Shakespeare) Poem by Gert Strydom

This huge content of living things
where everything roams free
without any real sceptered kings
dividing where realms should be

who do not bow to the gods of Mars
but is nature’s own paradise
not locked by hedges, fences or bars
where flowers and animals daily rise

and a throng of strong happy men do their duty
being true to the ancestral calling
working on plains, in the veldt at places of great beauty
in a land where the blue sky has rain falling

where the sun, moon and stars are like visitors
to peoples braver and fiercer than any conquistadors.