Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak:
The sun-born blood suffused 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 Greck;
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

Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,
With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby ;-
Yet such he might have been; he was a man,
Thou smilest?-Smile; 'tis better thus than sigh;
A soaring spirit, ever in the van,

A patriot hero or despotic chief,
Born under auspices which make us more
To form a nation's glory or its grief.
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,
Highborn, (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 dancing 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.

Lucullus, when frugality could charm,

Had roasted turnips in the 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 Hannal 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!

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.

ΧΙ.

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.
Their union grew; the children of the storm
Found beauty link'd with many a dusky form;
While these in turn admired the paler glow,
Which seem'd so white in climes that knew no

snow.

The chase, the race, the liberty to roam,
The soil where every cottage show'd a home;
The sea-spread net, the lightly-launch'd canoe,
Which stemm'd the studded archipelago,
O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles;
The healthy slumber, earn'd by sportive toils;
The palm, the loftiest dryad of the woods,
Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods,
While eagles scarce build higher than the crest
Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her breast;
The cava feast, the yam, the cocoa's root,
Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and
fruit;
[yields
The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare,
The unreap'd harvest of unfurrow'd fields,
And bakes its unadulterated loaves
Without a furnace in unpurchased groves,
And flings off famine from its fertile breast,
A priceless market for the gathering guest ;-
These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,
The airy joys of social solitudes,

Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies
Of those who were more happy, if less wise,
Did more than Europe's discipline had done,
And civilized Civilization's son.

XII.

Of these, and there was many a willing pair,
Neuha and Torquil were not the least fair:
Both children of the isles, though distant far;
Both born beneath a sea presiding star;
Both nourish'd amidst nature's native scenes,
Loved to the last, whatever intervenes
Between us and our childhood's sympathy,
Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.
He who first met the Highland's swelling blue
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
Long have I roam'd through lands which are
not mine,

Adored the Alp and loved the Apennine,
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:
But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;

The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy,
Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian
mount,

And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.
Forgive me, Homer's universal shade!
Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy stray'd;
The north and nature taught me to adore
Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before.
XIII.

The love which maketh all things fond and fair,
The youth which makes one rainbow of the air,
The dangers past, that make even man enjoy
The pause in which he ceases to destroy,
The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel
Strike to their hearts like lightning to the steel,
United the half savage and the whole,
The maid and boy in one absorbing soul.
No more the thundering memory of the fight
Wrapp'd his wean'd bosom in its dark delight;
No more the irksome restlessness of rest
Disturb'd him like the eagle in her nest,
Whose wetted beak and far-pervading eye
Darts for a victim over all the sky:
His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state,
At once Elysian and effeminate,
Which leaves no laurels o'er the hero's urn ;-
These wither when for aught save blood they
burn;

Yet when their ashes in their nook are laid,
Doth not the myrtle leave as sweet a shade?
Had Cæsar known but Cleopatra's kiss,
Rome had been free, the world had not been his.
And what have Caesar's deeds and Cæsar's fame
Done for the earth? We feel them in our shame :
The gory sanction of his glory stains
The rust which tyrants cherish on our chains.
Though Glory, Nature, Reason, Freedom, bid
Roused millions do what single Brutus did-
Sweep these mere mock-birds of the despot's
song
[so long,
From the tall bough where they have perch'd
Still are we hawk'd at by such mousing owls,
And take for falcons those ignoble fowls,
When but a word of freedom would dispel
These bugbears, as their terrors show too well.

XIV.

Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,
Neuha, the South Sea girl, was all a wife,
With no distracting world to call her off
From love; with no society to scoff
At the new transient flame; no babbling crowd
Of coxcombry in admiration loud,

When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the scarlet fever at Aberdeen, I was removed by medical advice into the Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period I date my love of moun tainous countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon at sunset with a sensation which I cannot describe. This was boyish enough; but I was then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays.

Or with adulterous whisper to alloy
Her duty, and her glory, and her joy:
With faith and feelings naked as her form,
She stood and stands a rainbow in a storm,
Changing its hues with bright variety,
But still expanding lovelier o'er the sky,
Howe'er its arch may swell, its colours move,
The cloud-compelling harbinger of love.

XV.

Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn shore,
They pass'd the tropics' red meridian o'er;
Nor long the hours-they never paused o'er
time,

Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,
Which deals the daily pittance of our span,
And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.
What deem'd they of the future or the past?
The present, like a tyrant, held them fast:
Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide,
Like her smooth billow, saw their moments
glide;

Their clock the sun, in his unbounded tow'r ;
They reckon'd not, whose day was but an hour;
The nightingale, their only vesper-bell,
Sung sweetly to the rose the day's farewell;*
The broad sun set, but not with lingering sweep,
As in the north he mellows o'er the deep;
But fiery, full, and fierce, as if he left
The world for ever, earth of light bereft,
Plunged with red forehead down along the wave,
As dives a hero headlong to his grave.
Then rose they, looking first along the skies,
And then for light into each other's eyes,
Wondering that summer show'd so brief a sun,
And asking if indeed the day were done.

XVI.

And let not this seem strange: the devotee
Lives not in earth, but in his ecstasy;
Around him days and worlds are headless
driven,

His soul is gone before his dust to heaven.
Is love less potent? No-his path is trod,
Alike uplifted gloriously to God;

Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
Strip off this fond and false identity!—
Who thinks of self when gazing on the sky?
And who, though gazing lower, ever thought,
In the young moments ere the heart is taught
Time's lesson, of man's baseness or his own?
All nature is his realm, and love his throne.

XVII.

Neuha arose, and Torquil: twilight's hour
Came sad and softly to their rocky bower,
Which, kindling by degrees its dewy spars,
Echoed their dim light to the mustering stars.
Slowly the pair, partaking nature's calm,
Sought out their cottage, built beneath the palm;
Now smiling and now silent, as the scene;
Lovely as Love-the spirit !-when serene.
The Ocean scarce spoke louder with his swell,
Than breathes his mimic murmurer in the shell,*
As, far divided from his parent deep,
The sea-born infant cries, and will not sleep,
Raising his little plaint in vain, to rave
For the broad bosom of his nursing wave:
The woods droop'd darkly, as inclined to rest,
The tropic bird wheel'd rockward to his nest,
And the blue sky spread round them like a lake
Of peace, where l'iety her thirst might slake.

XVIII.

But through the palm and plantain, hark, a

voice!

Not such as would have been a lover's choice,
In such an hour, to break the air so still;
No dying night-breeze, harping o'er the hill,
Striking the strings of nature, rock and tree,
Those best and earliest lyres of harmony,
With Echo for their chorus; nor the alarm
Of the loud war-whoop to dispel the charm;
Nor the soliloquy of the hermit owl,
Exhaling all his solitary soul,

The dim, though large-eyed winged anchorite,
Who peals his dreary pean o'er the night;-
But a loud, long, and naval whistle, shrill
As ever started through a sea-bird's bill;
And then a pause, and then a hoarse, 'Hillo!
Torquil, my boy! what cheer? Ho! brother,
ho!'

eve

cried Torquil, following with his Here's one, was all the brief reply.

XIX.

But here the herald of the self-same mouth Came breathing o'er the aromatic south,

If the reader will apply to his ear the seashell on his chimney-picce, he will be aware of what is alla Ito. If the text should appear obscure, he will find in Gecir the saDE idea, better expressed, in two lines. The poem I never read, but have heard the lines quoted by a more recont te reader, who seems to be of a different opinion from the Editor of the Quarterly Review, who qualified it, in his answer to the critical reviewer of his Juvenal, as trash of the worst and most inscne description. It is to Mr Landor, the author of Gedir, so qualfied, and of some Latin poems, which vie with Martial or Catullus in obscenity, that the immaculate Mr Southey addresses his declamation against impurity.

Not like a bed of violets' on the gale,
But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale,
Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet had
Its gentle odours over either zone, [blown
And, puff d where'er winds rise or waters roll,
Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,
Opposed its vapour as the lightning flash'd,
And reek'd, 'midst mountain billows, unabash'd,
To Eolus a constant sacrifice,
Through every change of all the varying skies.
And what was he who bore it ?—I may err,
But deem him sailor or philosopher.*
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, [Strand;
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress,
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress,
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties-Give me a cigar!

XX.

His arms were all his own, our Europe's growth,
Which two worlds bless for civilizing both;
The musket swung behind his shoulders broad,
And somewhat stoop'd by his marine abode,
But brawny as the boar's; and hung beneath,
His cutlass droop'd, unconscious of a sheath,
Or lost or worn away; his pistols were
Link'd to his belt, a matrimonial pair-
(Let not this metaphor appear a scoff,
Though one miss'd fire, the other would go off);
These, with a bayonet, not so free from rust
As when the arm-chest held its brighter trust,
Completed his accoutrements, as Night
Survey'd him in his garb heteroclite.

full view

XXI.

What cheer, Ben Bunting?' cried (when in Our new acquaintance) Torquil. Aught of [new?' Ey, ey!' quoth Ben, 'not new, but news enow; A strange sail in the offing.''-'Sail! and how? What! could you make her out? It cannot be; I've seen no rag of canvas on the sea.' 'Belike,' said Ben, 'you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watch'd toI saw her in the doldrums; for the wind [day,

A human figure broke the solitude,
Fantastically, it may be, array'd,
A seaman in a savage masquerade;
Such as appears to rise out from the deep
When o'er the line the merry vessels sweep,
And the rough saturnalia of the tar

Flock o'er the deck, in Neptune's borrow'd
And, pleased, the god of ocean sees his name
Revive once more, though but in mimic game
Of his true sons, who riot in the breeze
Undreamt of in his native Cyclades.

Still the old god delights, from out the main,
To snatch some glimpses of his ancient reign.
Our sailor's jacket, though in ragged trim,
His constant pipe, which never yet burn'd dim,
His foremast air, and somewhat rolling gait,
Like his dear vessel, spoke his former state;
But then a sort of kerchief round his head,
Not over tightly bound, or nicely spread;
And 'stead of trousers (ah! too early torn!
For even the mildest woods will have their thorn)
A curious sort of somewhat scanty mat
Now served for inexpressibles and hat;
His naked feet and neck, and sunburnt face,
Perchance might suit alike with either race.

Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an inveterate sincker,-even to pipes beyond computa

t.on.

This rough but jovial ceremony, used in crossing the line, has been so often and so well described that it need not be more than alluded to.

About ?-Whate'er may have us now in chase, We'll make no running fight, for that were base; We will die at our quarters, like true men.' Ey, ey! for that 'tis all the same to Ben.'

Does Christian know this?'-'Ay; he has piped all hands

To quarters. They are furbishing the stands Of arms; and we have got some guns to bear,

And scaled them. You are wanted.'-' That's but fair;

And if it were not, mine is not the soul
To leave my comrades helpless on the shoal.
My Neuha! ha! and must my fate pursue
Not me alone, but one so sweet and true?
But whatsoe'er betide, ah, Neuha! now
Unman me not; the hour will not allow
A tear; I'm thine whatever intervenes !'
'Right, quoth Ben; that will do for the
marines.'*

That will do for the marines, but the sailors won't believe it.' is an old saying; and one of the few fragments of former jealousies which still survive (in jest only) between these gallant

services.