HERE, by the margin of the murmuring main,
While her proud remnants I explore in vain,
And lonely stray through these dejected lands
Fanned by the noontide breeze on burning sands,
Where the dull Spaniard once possessed these shades,
And ports defended by his palisades-
Though lost to us, Port Royal claims a sigh,
Nor shall the Muse the unenvied verse deny.
Of all the towns that graced Jamaica's isle,
This was her glory, and the proudest pile,
Where toils on toils bade Wealth's gay structures rise,
And commerce swelled her glory to the skies.
St. Jago, seated on a distant plain,
Ne'er saw the tall ship entering from the main,
Unnoticed streams her Cobra's margin lave,
Where yond' tall plantains shade her glowing wave,
And burning sands or rock-surrounded hill
Confess its founder's fears, or want of skill.
While o'er these waste with wearied step I go,
Past scenes of death return, in all their woe,
O'er these sad shores in angry pomp he passed,
Moved in the winds, and raged with every blast.
Here opening gulfs confessed the Almighty hand,
Here the dark ocean rolled across the land,
Here piles on piles an instant tore away,
Here crowds on crowds in mingled ruin lay.
BETWIXT old Cancer and the midway line,
In happiest climate lies this envied isle.
Trees bloom throughout the year, soft breezes blow,
And fragrant Flora wears a lasting smile.
Cool, woodland streams from shaded cliffs descend,
The dripping rock no want of moisture knows,
Supplied the springs that on the skies depend,
That fountain feeding as the current flows.
Sweet verdant isle, through thy dark woods I rove,
And learn the nature of each native tree,
The fustic hard, the poisonous manchineel,
Which for its fragrant apple pleaseth thee,
Alluring to the smell, fair to the eye,
But deadliest poison in the taste is found—
Oh, shun the dangerous tree, nor touch, like Eve,
This interdicted fruit, in Eden's ground.
The lowly mangrove, fond of watery soil,
The white-barked gregory, rising high in air,
The mastic in the woods you may descry;
Tamarind, and lofty bay trees flourish there.
Sweet orange grove in lonely valleys rise
And drop their fruits, unnoticed and unknown,
The cooling acid limes in hedges grow,
The juicy lemons swell in shades their own.
Australia, in her varied forms, expands,
And opens to the sky her hundred lands,
From where the day-beam paints the waters blue,
Around the blessed islands of Arroo,
And life, in all its myriad mouldings, plays,
Amid the beauty of the tropic blaze-
Where summer watches with undying eye,
And equal day and night divide the sky-
Where the throned Phoebus wakens all the flowers,
To do him homage in his own bright bowers-
And Cynthia, on her empyrean height,
Holds crowded levee through the livelong night—
Where starlight is a gala of the skies,
And sunset is a cloud-sketched paradise;
Away, away, to where the billows rave,
Around the quenched volcano's echoing cave-
Where she, the lonely beauty, sits and smiles,
In sweetness, like an orphan of the isles,
Fair as fair Aphrodite on the deep,
But alone as Ariadne on her steep!
Away, away, to where the dolphins play,
And the sea-lion tracks his pathless way.
IT was a wondrous realm beguiled
Our youth amid its charms to roam;
O'er scenes more fair, serenely wild,
Not often summer's glory smiled;
When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright-
No alabaster half so white-
Hung lightly in a luminous dome
Of sapphire seemed to float and sleep
Far in the front of its blue steep;
And almost awful, none the less
For its liquescent loveliness.
Behind them sunk—just o'er the hill—
The deep abyss, profound and still,
The so immediate Infinite,
That yet emerged, the same, it seemed,
In hue divine and melting balm,
In many a lake whose crystal calm
Uncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;
Where sky above and lake below
Would like one sphere of azure show,
Save for the circling belt alone,
The softly painted purple zone
Of mountains, bathed where nearer seen
In sunny tints of sober green,
With velvet dark of woods between,
All glossy glooms and shifting sheen;
While here and there some peak of snow
Would o'er their tenderer violet lean.
|