THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

Pellissier, who wrote on music and on religious psychology.The great and well-known writer D.F. Malherbe has written on national relations. He has alsowritten beautiful poems on the history of Deborah and Sisera, on Amos, and on the drama betweenBlack and White. All three of these writers -- Totius (or Du Toit), Pellissier and Malherbe -- are ofFrench Huguenot descent.Dr. G.M Dekker has written manuals on Afrikaner National Culture and Afrikaner Literature. Thegreat poet who died just a few months ago, W.E.G. Louw, wrote on art and the future. J. AbelCoetzee wrote on the traditional Afrikaner style of life. And of course, N.P van Wyk Louw (thebrother of W.E.G. Louw) has written what is regarded by Germanic language specialistseverywhere and especially in Europe -- as the greatest saga written in any Germanic language in the20th century.Let me give you a few more examples. My own favourite Afrikaans poet, is Jan F.E. Celliers. Hewrote a poem about 70 years ago on a little bonfire that he had kindled in the veld. Here is my ownattempt to translate some lines from this beautiful poem:"My little fire and I are onwatch,my little fire and I alone.I know there are parties tonightin many a bright hall,but no one misses meat the dance and the feasts--banished, forgotten, estranged.But even so far from the crowdsin my lonely little home,I feel at one with the Lordalone--a child, in His bosom,contented!"Another mighty poem he wrote about the desert scenes of South Africa with the huge rockymountains sticking up out of the plains, goes as follows:"Stone cities in the silent nighterect their rockeries of might,and bitterness melts through the sand.May neither laugh nor sigh of painescape from pillar or from stone.With all Thy peace around me here,God whispers with His still smallvoiceand sparkles from His SouthernCross."The Southern Cross is a constellation of stars in the shape of a cross, which is seen only in thesouthern hemisphere. Incidentally, the star in what is the head of that cross was vividly describedby Her Majesty's Astronomer Royal, Sir William Herschel, the Christian discoverer of the planetUranus (and who was stationed in Cape Town for many years). He said this star in the head of the