| |
I. WHEN the dull gray mists of the morning | |
| Hung over the land and sea, | |
| We rode to the heights o’erlooking | |
| The Vale of the Yumuri: | |
| Thither we rode, and waited | 5 |
| Till the sun, like an Angel of Light, | |
| Touched with transfiguring glory | |
| The vaporous ghost of night. | |
| While over the sea behind us | |
| The clouds yet darkly lie, | 10 |
| They are silvery on the hillsides, | |
| They are crimsoned up in the sky; | |
| And with noiseless smoke-surf drifting | |
| And breaking on palmy knolls, | |
| With its great drop-curtain lifting, | 15 |
| The tropical scene outrolls! | |
| In the lap of the verdant mountains, | |
| In many a mural chain, | |
| Here ripens the golden orange, | |
| Here sweetens the sugar-cane; | 20 |
| Not fairer the Happy Valley | |
| Of the Abyssinian tale, | |
| And the giant Pan of Matanzas | |
| Is monarch of the vale. | |
| With glistening eyes, as of childhood, | 25 |
| O’er the summer hills I glance, | |
| With eyes that the unfamiliar | |
| Enchants with the hues of romance. | |
| Oh, I stood there, as youth stands ever, | |
| With the morning light on the earth, | 30 |
| Yet near the veiled ocean, shadowing | |
| The mystery of birth. | |
| |
II. We rode through the valley at evening: | |
| A golden sunset burned, | |
| And against it the piny summits | 35 |
| Were black, as we returned; | |
| The mountain shadows lengthened, | |
| The sun went down behind, | |
| And in streamers of rosy color | |
| Grew the twilight arch defined. | 40 |
| With luminous interspaces | |
| Of that glory in the west, | |
| The feathering palm-trees tapered | |
| Up from each hillock’s crest, | |
| Than columns of human temples | 45 |
| More tall and graceful far; | |
| Their broad leaves faintly silvered | |
| By the rays of the evening star. | |
| It was beautiful as a vision! | |
| But we passed a gap in the hills, | 50 |
| By a river,—and lo! the ocean | |
| The vast horizon fills! | |
| No more as it was at morning, | |
| Wrapped in a misty cloud, | |
| It stretched to the north in its grandeur, | 55 |
| With the gathering night its shroud; | |
| And I thought of the valley’s legend, | |
| Of the chief in battle slain, | |
| Whose soul went forth as thy winds go, | |
| Thou melancholy main! | 60 |
| Oh, often in pleasant places | |
| Our lines of life may be, | |
| But Joy casts a shadow,—and round us | |
Forever flows the sea!
THE END. | |
| |
