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(Excerpt)
MY true-love clasped me by the hand, | |
| And from our garden alley, | |
| Looked o’er the landscape seamed with sea, | |
| And rich with hill and valley, | |
| And said, “We ’ve found a pleasant place | 5 |
| As fair as thine and my land, | |
| A calm abode, a flowery home, | |
| In sunny Staten Island. | |
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| “Behind us lies the teeming town | |
| With lust of gold grown frantic; | 10 |
| Before us glitters o’er the bay | |
| The peaceable Atlantic. | |
| We hear the murmur of the sea,— | |
| A monotone of sadness, | |
| But not a whisper of the crowd, | 15 |
| Or echo of its madness. | |
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| “See how the dogwood sheds its bloom | |
| Through all the greenwood mazes, | |
| As white as the untrodden snow | |
| That hides in shady places. | 20 |
| See how the fair catalpa spreads | |
| Its azure flowers in masses, | |
| Bell-shaped, as if to woo the wind | |
| To ring them as it passes. | |
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| “See, stretching o’er the green hillside, | 25 |
| The haunt of cooing turtle, | |
| The clambering vine, the branching elm, | |
| The maple and the myrtle, | |
| The undergrowth of flowers and fern | |
| In many-tinted lustre, | 30 |
| And parasites that climb or creep, | |
| And droop, and twist, and cluster. | |
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| “Behold the gorgeous butterflies | |
| That in the sunshine glitter, | |
| The bluebird, oriole, and wren | 35 |
| That dart and float and twitter; | |
| And humming-birds that peer like bees | |
| In stamen and in pistil, | |
| And, over all, the bright blue sky | |
| Translucent as a crystal. | 40 |
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| “The air is balmy, not too warm, | |
| And all the landscape sunny | |
| Seems, like the Hebrew Paradise, | |
| To flow with milk and honey. | |
| Here let us rest, a little while,— | 45 |
| Not rich enough to buy land, | |
| And pass a summer well content | |
| In bowery Staten Island.” * * * * * | |
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