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The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford

The Work of Cecil Rhodes: A Sonnet-Sequence: By Theodore Watts-Dunton
Watts-Dunton, Theodore (1832-1914)

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The Work of Cecil Rhodes
 I. 
I The Quest is the Crown
 II. 
II Great Souls live long
  
III Clive and Rhodes
  
IV The Burial in the Granite Caves
  
V The Spirit of Africa to Rhodes
  
VI The Haunted Matoppos
  
VII Old Africa and New
  
VIII The Captains of the Past

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22

V
The Spirit of Africa to Rhodes

Men ask, ‘Who shaped this mausoleum here
Of Nature-builded towers and bastioned piles,
Stretching right on for half a hundred miles,
Which symbols Rhodes, for it has no compeer?’
It symbols you, they say, great pioneer—
Save where a lonely lakelet, dimpling, smiles
With purple bloom of lotus-lily isles—
‘Because 'tis stern, imperious, strong, austere.’
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They ask, ‘What giant shaped these aisles of granite,
On what wild methods of what lawless planet,
Or crazy comet's mad, enormous modes?’—
No Titan built them for a Titan race:
I carved a province for your burying-place:
Africa's yearning dreams foresaw you, Rhodes.
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