The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Rhodes Memorial at Oxford

The Work of Cecil Rhodes: A Sonnet-Sequence: By Theodore Watts-Dunton

Watts-Dunton, Theodore (1832-1914)

The Work of Cecil Rhodes

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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VI
The Haunted Matoppos

Nature's siesta deepens to a swoon.
While golden-banded lizards slumber bright,
Nought breaks the stillness wrapping gorge and height
Save yonder bark from some amazed baboon;
Or is that sound a warning note that, soon,
Your alien shade will have to meet, at night,
The ‘Father of the Matabeles' Sprite’,
Who haunts these sacred caves at rise of moon?

Is it a warning from the mighty chief
Whose ghost so lately held these halls in fief
That when, to-night, he walks his burial ground
Each Nature-carven rock, each monstrous shape,
Will side with him, each stone-cut horse and ape,
Each rocky lion and fox and demon hound?

Umzilikazi, who was buried in the Matoppos and whose ghost still haunts the Matoppos, though his bones have been removed.