A Bushmans Love - A Fragment

You say we bushmen cannot love,     Our lives are too prosaic: hence     We lose or lack that finer sense     That raises some few men above     Their fellows, setting them apart     As vessels of a finer make,     The acme of the potters art,     Are placed apart upon the shelf.     So he is more than common delf,     And, more than brute in human guise,     Who, seeking, finds his nobler self     Twin-mirrored in a womans eyes!     Yet these things bring their penalty:     For oft the merest touch will break     These vessels of a finer make;     And throats attuned to noblest key     A draught of air will set awry,     And stifle in an ulcerous sore     The voice that floated to the sky     And silence it for evermore . . .     You say we bushmen cannot love,     That, like our foe, the fire-fiend,     We blaze, until a river-bend,     Nay, less, a pebble-graven groove     Where waters thread, doth bid us stay:     Our passions for a month, a week     Flare out and then they die away,     For separation, like the creek     That stays the bush fire, bars the way.     You say we bushmen cannot love.     Well, have it so! but this I swear,     That she possessed a power to move     The dullest boor to do or dare.     But I, as being somewhat shy,     Became the target for her wit . . .     How oft in wantonness shed pit     The blazing lances of her eye     And keener rapier of her tongue,     That carelessly made lightning play,     Until to action I was stung,     And, like a dumb beast, stood at bay . . .