moon.

For these most bloom where rests the war- | 'To-morrow for the Mooa we depart,

rior's head; But not to-night-to-night is for the heart. And we will sit in twilight's face, and see Again bestow the wreaths we gently woo, The sweet moon glancing through the tooa- Ye young enchantresses of gay Licoo!

tree,

How lovely are your forms! how every sense The lofty accents of whose sighing bough Bows to your beauties, soften'd, but intense, Shall sadly please us as we lean below; Like to the flowers on Mataloco’s steep, Or climb the steep, and view the surf in vain Which fling their fragrance far athwart Wrestle with rocky giants o'er the main,

the deep: Which spurn in columns back the baffled We too will see Licoo; but-oh! my heart

spray,

What do I say? to-morrow we depart. How beautiful are these! how happy they, Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives, Steal to look down where nought but Ocean

Thus rose a song—the harmony of times strives ! Before the winds blew Europe o’er these

climes. Even he too loves at times the blue lagoon, And smoothes his ruffled mane beneath the True, they had vices—such are Nature's

growthBut only the Barbarian's – we have both:

The sordor of civilization, mix'd Yes, from the sepulchre we'll gather with all the savage which man's fall hath flowers,

fix'd. Then feast like spirits in their promised Who hath not seen Dissimulation's reign,

bowers, Then plunge and revel in the rolling surf, Who such would see, may from his lattice

The prayers of Abel link'd to deeds of Cain? Then lay our limbs along the tender turf,

view And, wet and shining from the sportive toil, The Old World more degraded than the Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil,

New, And plait our garlands gather'd from the Now new no more,save where Columbia rears

grave, And wear the wreaths that sprung from Where Chimborazo, over air, earth, wave

Twin giants,born by Freedom to her spheres, out the brave.

Glares with his Titan-eye, and sees no slave. But lo! night comes, the Mooa woos us back, The sound of mats is heard along our track; Anon the torchlight-dance shall fling its

Such was this ditty of Tradition's days, sheen

Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys In flashing mazes o'er the Marly's green;

In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign And we too will be there; we too recal

Beyond the sound, whose charm is half The memory bright with many a festival,

divine; Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, For the first time were wafted in canoes.

But yields young History all to harmony; Alas! for them the flower of mankind bleeds; A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre Alas! for them our fields are rank with In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.

weeds:

For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Forgotten is the rapture, or unknown. Rung from the rock, or mingled with the Of wandering with the moon and love alone.

wave, But be it so:- they taught us how to wield Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, The club, and rain our arrows o'er the field; Or gathering mountain-echoes as they glide, Now let them reap the harvest of their art! Hath greater power o'er each true heart But feast to-night! to-morrow we depart. Strike up the dance, the cava-bowl fill high, Than all the columns Conquest's minions Drain every drop!--to-morrow we may die.

rear; In summer-garments be our limbs array'd; Invites, when Hieroglyphics are a theme Around our waists the Tappa's white dis- For sages' labours or the student's dream;

play'd;

Attracts, when History's volumes are a Thick wreaths shall form our Coronal, like

toil, Spring's,

The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil. And round our necks shall glance the Hooni- Such was this rude rhyme-rhyme is of strings;

the rudeSo shall their brighter hues contrast the But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,

glow

Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever Of the dusk bosoms that beat high below.

rise Lands which no foes destroy or civilize,

Exist: and what can our accomplish'd art But now the dance is o’er - yet stay awhile; Os verse do more than reach the awakend Ah, pause! nor yet put out the social smile.

and ear,

And sweetly now those untaught melodies Restore their surface, in itself so still, Broke the luxurious silence of the skies, Until the earthquake tear the Naiad's cave, The sweet siesta of a summer-day, Root up the spring and trample on the wave, The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,

And crush the living waters to a mass, When every flower was bloom, and air was The amphibious desart of the dank morass!

balm,

And must their fate be hers? The eternal
And the first breath began to stir the palm,

change
The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave But grasps humanity with quicker range;
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave, And they who fall, but fall as worlds will fall,
Where sat the songstress with the stranger To rise, if just, a spirit o'er them all.

boy,
Who taught her passion's desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most

And who is he? the blue-eyed northern O'er those who know not how it may be lost; or isles more known to man, but scarce

child O’er those who, burning in the new-born fire,

less wild; Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre, With such devotion to their ecstasy,

The fair-hair'd offspring of the Hebrides, That life knows no such rapture as to die: Where roars the Pentland with its whirling And die they do; for earthly life has nought Rock'd in his cradle by the roaring wind,

seas; Match'd with that burst of nature, even in

thought;

The tempest-born in body and in mind, And all our dreams of better life above

His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam, But close in one eternal gush of love.

Had from that moment deem'd the deep

his home,

The giant comrade of his pensive moods,
There sate the gentle savage of the wild, The sharer of his craggy solitudes,
In growth a woman, though in years a child, His bark was borne; the sport of wave and air;

The only Mentor of his youth, where'er
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripen'd rapidly save crime;

A careless thing, who placed his choice in
The infant of an infant-world, as pure

chance, From Nature - lovely, warm, and premature;

Nursed by the legends of his land's romance, Dusky like Night, but Night with all her Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,

stars,

Acquainted with all feelings save despair. Or cavern sparkling with its native spars ;

Placed in the Arab's clime, he would have

been With eyes that were a language and a spell,

As bold a rover as the sands have seen,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell;
With all her Loves around her on the deep, And braved their thirst with as enduring lip
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;

As Ismael, wafted on his desart-ship;
Yet full of life--for through her tropic cheek Fix'd upon Chili's shore, a proud Cacique;
The blush would make its way, and all on Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greck;

but speak;

Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane; The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and for the same soul that rends its path to

Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.

threw O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,

sway, Like coral reddening through the darken'd If reard to such, can find no further prey

Beyond itself, and must retrace its way,

wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.

Plunging for pleasure into pain; the same Such was this daughter of the Southern Seas, Spirit which made a Nero Rome's worst Herself a billow in her energies,

shame, To bear the bark of others' happiness,

A humbler state and discipline of heart Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less : Had form’d his glorious namesake's counHer wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew

terpart: No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er

But grant his vices, grant them all his own, drew

How small their theatre without a throne ! Aught from experience, that chill touch

stone, whose Thou smilest,—these comparisons seem Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:

high She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not, To those who scan all things with dazzled Or what she knew was soon -- too soon

eye ; forgot:

Link'd with the unknown name of one whose Her smiles and tears had pass’d, as light

doom

Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,
O'er lakes, to ruffle, not destroy, their glass, With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby,
Whose depths unsearch'd, and fountains Thou smilest?-Smile; 'tis better thus than
from the hill,

sigh:

winds pass

THE ISLA N D.

Yet such he might have been; he was a man, which seem'd so white in climes that knew
A soaring spirit ever in the van,

no snow. A patriot hero or despotic chief,

The chase, the race, the liberty to roam, To form a nation's glory or its grief, The soil where every cottage show'd a Born under auspices which make us more

home; Or less than we delight to ponder o'er. The sea-spread net, the lightly launch'd But these are visions; say, what was he here?

canoe, A blooming boy, a truant mutineer, Which stemm'd the studded Archipelago, The fair-haird Torquil, free as Ocean's O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry išles;

spray,

The healthy slumber, earn'd by sportive
The husband of the bride of Toobonai.

toils;
The palm, the loftiest Dryad of the woods,

Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods, By Neuha's side he sate, and watch'd the While eagles scarce build higher than the waters,–

crest Neuha, the sun-flower of the Island-daugh- Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her ters,

breast; Highborn (a birth at which the herald The cava feast, the yam, the cocoa's root,

smiles,

Which bears at once the cup, and milk, Without a scutcheon for these secret isles)

and fruit; of a long race, the valiant and the free,

The bread-tree, which, without the plough-
The naked knights of savage chivalry,

share, yields
Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore, The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields,
And thine.-I've seen,- Achilles ! do no more. And bakes its unadulterated loaves
She, when the thunder-bearing strangers Without a furnace in unpurchased groves,
In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame, A priceless market for the gathering guest; -

And flings off famine from its fertile breast, Toppd with tall trees, which, loftier than These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,

the palm, The airy joys of social solitudes, Seem'd rooted in the deep amidst its calm; Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies But, when the winds awaken'd shot forth Of those who were more happy if less wise,

wings Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings, And civilized civilization's son!

Did more than Europe's discipline had done, And sway'd the waves, like cities of the sea, Making the very billows look less free;

Of these, and there was many a willing She, with her paddling oar and dancing

pair, prow,

Neuha and Torquil were not the least fair: Shot through the surf,like rein-deer through Both children of the isles, though distant far;

the snow, Both born beneath a sea-presiding star; Swift-gliding o'er the breakers’ whitening Both nourish'd amidstNature's native scenes,

edge,

Lov'd to the last whatever intervenes Light as a Nereid in her ocean-sledge, Between us and our childhood's sympathy, And gazed and wonder'd at the giant hulk Which still reverts to what first caught Which heaved from wave to wave its tramp

ling bulk:

He who first met the Highland's swelling The anchor dropp’d, it lay along the deep,

blue, Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,

Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue, While round it swarm’d the proas' flitting Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,

chain,

And clasp the mountain in his mind's emLike summer-bees that hum around his

brace. Long have I roam'd through lands which

are not mine, The white man landed ; need the rest be Adored the Alp and loved the Apennine,

told ?

Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep The New World stretch'd its dusk hand to Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:

the Old;

But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all Each was to each a marvel, and the tie Their nature held me in their thrilling Of wonder warm’d to better sympathy.

thrall; Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires, The infant-rapture still survived the boy, And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires, And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy, Their union grew: the children of the Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian storm

mount, Found beauty link'd with many a dusky And Highland linns with Castalie's clear form;

fount. While these in turn admired the paler glow, Forgive me, Homer's universal shade!

tide,

Forgive me, Phæbus! that my fancy stray'd; But still expanding lovelier o'er the sky, The North and Nature taught me to adore Howe'er its arch may swell, its colours move, Your scenes sublime, from those beloved The cloud-compelling harbinger of Love.

before.

Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn The love which maketh all things fond

shore, and fair,

They pass'd the Tropic's red meridian o'er; The youth which makes one rainbow of Nor long the honrs-they never paused o’er the air,

time, The dangers past, that make even man enjoy Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime, The pause in which he ceases to destroy, Which deals the daily pittance of our span, The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel And points and mocks with iron-laugh at man. Strike to their hearts like lightning to the What deem'd they of the future or the past ?

steel,

The present, like a tyrant, held them fast: United the half savage and the whole, Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the The maid and boy, in one absorbing soul. No more the thundering memory of the fight Like her smooth billow, saw their moments Wrapp'd his wean'd bosom in its dark

glide; delight;

Theirclock the Sun, in his unbounded tower; No more the irksome restlessness of Rest They reckon'd not, whose day was but an Disturb’d him like the eagle in her nest,

hour; Whose whetted beak and far-pervading eye The nightingale, their only vesper-bell, Darts for a victim over all the sky; Sung sweetly to the rose the day's farewell; His heart was tamed to that voluptuous The broad Sun set, but not with lingering state,

sweep, At once Elysian and effeminate,

As in the North he mellows o'er the deep, Which leaves no laurels o'er the hero's urn; But fiery, full, and fierce, as if he left These wither when for aught save blood The world for ever, earth of light bereft,

they burn; Plunged with red forehead down along the Yet, wh their ashes in their nook are laid,

wave, Doth not the myrtle leave as sweet a shade? As dives a hero headlong to his grave. Had Cæsar known but Cleopatra's kiss, Then rose they, looking first along the Rome had been free, the world had not

skies, been bris.

And then for light into each other's eyes, And what haveCæsar's deeds andCæsar's fame Wondering that summer show'd so brief Done for the earth? We feel them in our

a sun, shame:

And asking if indeed the day were done? The gory sanction of his glory stains The rust which tyrants cherish on our

And let not this seem strange; the devotee chains.

Lives not in earth, but in his extasy ; Though Glory, Nature, Reason, Freedom,bid Around him days and worlds are heedless Roused millions do what single Brutus did,

driven, Sweep these mere mock-birds of the despot's His soul is gone before his dust to heaven.

song From the tall bough where they have perch'd Alike uplifted gloriously to God;

Is love less potent? No-his path is trod, so long,

Or link'd to all we know of heaven below, Still are we hawk'd at by such mousing owls, The other better self, whose joy or woe And take for falcons those ignoble fowls, When but a word of freedom would dispel which, kindled by another, grows the same,

Is more than ours; the all-absorbing flame These bugbears, as their terrors show too Wrapt in one blaze; the pure, yet funeral well.

pile,

Where gentle hearts, like Bramins, sit and Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,

smile. Neuha, the South-Sea-girl, was all a wife, How often we forget all time, when lone, With no distracting world to call her off Admiring Nature's universal throne, From love; with no society to scoff Her woods, herwilds, her waters, the intense At the new transient flame; no babbling Reply of hers to our intelligence!

crowd

Live not the stars and mountains ? Are the Of coxcombry in admiration loud,

waves Or with adulterous whisper to alloy Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves Her duty, and her glory, and her joy ; Without a feeling in their silent tears? With faith and feelings naked as her form, No, m;- they woo and clasp us to their She stood as stands a rainbow in a storin,

spheres, Changing its hues with bright variety, Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before

rest;

Its hour, and merge our soul in the great | Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet shore.

had blown Strip off this fond and false identity!-- Its gentle odours over either zone, Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky? And, puffd where'er winds rise or waters roll, And who, though gazing lower,ever thought, Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the In the young moments ere the heart is taught

Pole, Time's lesson, of man's baseness or his own? Opposed its vapour as the lightning flash'd, All Nature is his realm, and Love his throne. And reek’d, 'midst mountain-billows un

abash’d,

To Æolus a constant sacrifice, Neuha arose, and Torquil: twilight's hour Through every change of all the varying Came sad and softly to their rocky bower,

skies. Which, kindling by degrees its dewy spars, And what was he who bore it?-I may err, Echo'd their dim light to the mustering stars. But deem him sailor or philosopher. Slowly the pair, partaking Nature's calm, Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Sought out their cottage, built beneath the Cheers the Tar's labour or the Turkman's

palm; Now smiling and now silent, as the scene; Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides Lovely as Love the spirit! when serene. His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; The Ocean scarce spoke louder with his Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,

swell

Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Than breathes his mimic murmurer in the

Strand; shell,

Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, As, far divided from his parent deep, When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and The sea-born infant cries and will not sleep,

ripe; Raising his little plaint in vain, to rave

Like other charmers, wooing the caress For the broad bosom of his nursing wave: More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; The woods droop'd darkly, as inclined to Yet thy true lovers more admire by far

rest,

Thy naked beauties–Give me a cigar! The Tropic-bird wheeld rock-ward to his

nest, And the blue sky spread round them like a

Through the approaching darkness of the lake

wood Of peace, where Piety her thirst might slake. A human figure broke the solitude,

Fantastically, it may be, array'd, But through the palm and plaintain, hark,

A seaman in a savage masquerade; a voice!

Such as appears to rise out from the deep, Not such as would have been a lover's choice, When o'er the Line the merry vessels sweep, In such an hour, to break the air so still! And the rough Saturnalia of the Tar No dying night-breeze, harping o'er the hill,

Flock o'er the deck,in Neptune's borrow'd car; Striking the strings of Nature, rock and And, pleased, the God of Ocean sees his name

tree,

Revive once more, though but in mimic Those best and earliest lyres of harmony,

game With echo for their chorus; nor the alarm of his true sons, who riot in a breeze Of the loud war-whoop to dispel the charm; Still the old god delights, from out the

Undreamt of in his native Cyclades. Nor the soliloquy of the hermit owl,

main, Exhaling all his solitary soul, The dim though large-eyed winged ancho- To snatch some glimpses of his ancient reign.

rite,

Our sailor's jacket, though in ragged trim, Who peals his dreary pæan o'er the night;- | His constant pipe, which never yet burn'd But a loud, long, and naval whistle, shrill His foremast air, and somewhat rolling gait,

dim, As ever startled through a sea-bird's bill;. Like his dear vessel, spoke his former state; And then a pause, and then a hoarse “ “Hillo! Torquil! my boy! what cheer? Ho, brother, But then a sort of kerchief round his head,

ho!”

Not over tightly bound, nor nicely spread; “Who hails?" cried Torquil, following for even the mildest woods will have their

And 'stead of trowsers (ah! too early tow!

with his eye The sound. “Here's one," was all the brief

thorn) A curious sort of somcwhat scanty mat reply.

Now served for inexpressibles and hat;

His naked feet and neck, and sunburnt face, But here the herald of the self-same mouth Perchance might suit alike with either racę. Came breathing o'er the aromatic south, His arms were all his own, our Europe's Not like a “bed of violets” on the gale,

growth, But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale, / Which two worlds bless for civilizing both;