Mistress of Rooibos

Splendid in beauty and fragrant in ruby How I linger in your placid dreams, drawing out your parched tongue I shall scatter my daughters with the devine whip of the winds They will suck out the moisture of the land and give you blessings upon blessings above the soil The sorcery of my leaves will entice you to slavery And that ominous smell? It belongs to me. IT SHALL indeed encourage your prosperity Even as I am poured out, More loosely than the spring rains I scream from within your palms In every corner where men have set base However, now, my silence is rewarded by the plundering of my kingdom My beauty is disheveled  by the uprooting  of my shoots There is ecstacy in the sights of my smell, the moistened blood of the South African  velds I cannot be denied nor my power refused, Even if it against my own will I am plundered. Who are earth queens? Do they not succumb to the very sweat of me. Do they not draw up peace treaties with my name Or guide alliances from the sip of thine I am the jewel of the South African grasslands. The fragrance of diversity, beyond the African dust. Oh! How I have bedded the velds and adorned them!