Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes
For the first time were wafted in canoes.
Alas! for them the flower of mankind bleeds;
Alas! for them our fields are rank with weeds;
Forgotten is the rapture, or unknown,
Of wandering with the moon and love alone.
But be it so they taught us how to wield
The club, and rain our arrows o'er the field;
Now let them reap the harvest of their art!
But feast to-night! to-morrow we depart.
Strike up the dance, the cava bowl fill high,
die.
Drain every drop!-to-morrow we may
In summer garments be our limbs array'd;
Around our waist the Tappa's white display'd;
Thick wreaths shall form our coronals, like spring's,
And round our necks shall glance the Hooni strings ;
So shall their brighter hues contrast the glow
Of the dusk bosoms that beat high below.

III.

But now the dance is o'er-yet stay awhile;
Ah, pause! nor yet put out the social smile.
To-morrow for the Mooa we depart,
But not to-night-to-night is for the heart.
Again bestow the wreaths we gently woo,

enchantresses of

gay

Licoo!

Ye
young
How lovely are your forms! how every sense
Bows to your beauties, softened, but intense,
Like to the flowers on Mataloco's steep,

Which fling their fragrance far athwart the deep ;

We too will see Licoo; but oh! heartmy

What do I say? to-morrow we depart.

IV.

Thus rose a song—the harmony of times

Before the winds blew Europe o'er these climes.

True, they had vices-such are nature's growth—

But only the barbarian's—we have both :

The sordor of civilization, mix'd

With all the savage which man's fall hath fix'd.
Who hath not seen dissimulation's reign,

The
prayers of Abel link'd to deeds of Cain?
Who such would see, may from his lattice view
The old world more degraded than the new,-
Now new no more, save where Columbia rears
Twin giants, born by freedom to her spheres,
Where Chimborazo, over air, earth, wave,
Glares with his Titan eye, and sees no slave.

V.

Such was this ditty of tradition's days,
Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys
In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign
Beyond the sound, whose charm is half divine;
Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,
But yields young history all to harmony;
A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire:
For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave,
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns conquest's minions rear ;
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labours or the student's dream;
Attracts, when history's volumes are a toil,—
The first, the freshest bud of feeling's soil.
Such was this rude rhyme-rhyme is of the rude-
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilize,
Exist: and what can our accomplish'd art

Of verse do more than reach the awaken'd heart?

VI.

And sweetly now those untaught melodies
Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,
The sweet siesta of a summer day,

The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,

When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,

And the first breath began to stir the palm,

The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave,

Where sate the songstress with the stranger boy,
Who taught her passion's desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most
O'er those who know not how it may be lost;
O'er those who, burning in the new-born fire,
Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstacy,
That life knows no such rapture as to die :
And die they do; for earthly life has nought

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

And all our dreams of better life above

But close in one eternal gush of love.

VII.

There sate the gentle savage of the wild,
In growth a woman, though in years a child,
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripen'd rapidly save crime!
The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature--lovely, warm, and premature ;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars ;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep;
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep,
Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak;
The sun-born blood diffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the Southern Seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,

To bear the bark of others' happiness,
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm, yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues :
She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not,
Or what she knew was soon-too soon forgot :
Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass
O'er lakes, to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,
Whose depths unsearch'd, and fountains from the hill,
Restore their surface, in itself so still,

Until the earthquake tear the Naiad's cave,
Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,
And crush the living waters to a mass,

The amphibious desert of the dank morass!

And must their fate be hers? The eternal change

But grasps humanity with quicker range;

And they who fall, but fall as worlds will fall,

To rise, if just, a spirit o'er them all.

VIII.

And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child
Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;
The fair-hair'd offspring of the Hebrides,
Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas;

Rock'd in his cradle by the roaring wind,
The tempest-born in body and in mind,

His

young eyes opening on the ocean foam,
Had from that moment deem'd the deep his home,—
The giant comrade of his pensive moods,
The sharer of his craggy solitudes,
The only Mentor of his youth, where'er

His bark was borne, the sport of wave and air;
A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance,
Nursed by the legends of his land's romance;
Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,
Acquainted with all feelings save despair.
Placed in the Arab's clime, he would have been
As bold a rover as the sands have seen,
And braved their thirst with as enduring lip
As Ishmael wafted on his desert-ship;
Fix'd upon Chili's shore, a proud Cacique;
On Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greek ;
Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane;
Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.
For the same soul that rends its path to sway,
If rear'd to such, can find no further prey
Beyond itself, and must retrace its way, t
Plunging for pleasure into pain; the same
Spirit which made a Nero, Rome's worst shame,
A humbler state and discipline of heart
Had form'd his glorious namesake's counterpart :
But grant his vices, grant them all his own,
How small their theatre without a throne!

IX.

Thou smilest, these comparisons seem high

To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;
Link'd with the unknown name of one whose doom

Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,

*The "ship of the desert" is the Oriental figure for the camel or dromedary, and they deserve the metaphor well; the former for his endurance, the latter for his swiftness.

"Lucullus, when frugality could charm,

Had wasted turnips in his Sabine farm."-POPE.

The Consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal; thereby accomplishing an achievement almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Asdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed with a sigh, that "Rome would now be the mistress of the world." And yet to this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned at all! But the infamy of the one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of "Nero" is heard, who thinks of the Consul? But such are human things.

With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby.

Thou smilest!-Smile; 't is better thus than sigh;

Yet such he might have been; he was a man,

A soaring spirit ever in the van,

A patriot hero or despotic chief,

To form a nation's glory or its grief ;

Born under auspices which make us more
Or less than we delight to ponder o'er.
But these are visions; say, what was he here?
A blooming boy, a truant mutineer,

The fair-hair'd Torquil, free as ocean's spray,
The husband of the bride of Toobonai.

X.

By Neuha's side he sate, and watch'd the waters,-
Neuha, the sun-flower of the Island daughters,
High-born (a birth at which the herald smiles,
Without a scutcheon for these secret isles)
Of a long race, the valiant and the free,
The naked knights of savage chivalry,
Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore,
And thine,-I've seen,-Achilles! do no more.
She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came
In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame,
Topp'd with tall trees which, loftier than the palm,
Seem'd rooted in the deep amidst its calm;
But when the winds awaken'd, shot forth wings
Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,
And sway'd the waves, like cities of the sea,
Making the very billows look less free ;-

She, with her paddling oar and darcing prow,

Shot through the surf, like reindeer through the snow, Swift gliding o'er the breaker's whitening edge,

Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge,

And gazed and wonder'd at the giant hulk

Which heaved from wave to wave its trampling bulk :

The anchor dropp'd, it lay along the deep,

Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,

While round it swarm'd the proas' flitting chain,
Like summer-bees that hum around his mane.

XI.

The white man landed,-need the rest be told?
The New World stretch'd its dusk hand to the Old;
Each was to each a marvel, and the tie
Of wonder warm'd to better sympathy.
Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires,
And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires.