Karoo - Karoo in Literature

Karoo in Literature

Poet Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem The Dead Drummer:

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -
Fresh from his Wessex home -
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

In Bridge-Guard in the Karroo, Rudyard Kipling evoked the loneliness experienced by blockhouse soldiers at Ketting station on the Dwyka River while guarding the Karoo railway track, a lifeline during the South African War (excerpts):

Sudden the desert changes,
The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
Stand up like the thrones of Kings –

We hear the Hottentot herders
As the sheep click past to the fold –
And the click of the restless girders
As the steel contracts in the cold –

And the solemn firmament marches,
And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches –
Banded and barred by the ties, ...