| |
| LOVED Voyager! his pages had a zest | |
| More sweet than fiction to my wondering breast, | |
| When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day | |
| I tracked his wanderings o’er the watery way, | |
| Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams, | 5 |
| Or plucked the fleur-de-lys by Jesso’s streams, | |
| Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand | |
| Where Europe’s anchor ne’er had bit the sand, | |
| Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain, | |
| Or human voice broke nature’s silent reign; | 10 |
| But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear, | |
| And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter’s snare. | |
| Such young delight his real records brought, | |
| His truth so touched romantic springs of thought, | |
| That all my after-life his fate and fame | 15 |
| Entwined romance with La Pérouse’s name. | |
| Fair were his ships, expert his gallant crews, | |
| And glorious the enterprise of La Pérouse,— | |
| Humanely glorious! Men will weep for him, | |
| When many a guilty martial fame is dim: | 20 |
| He ploughed the deep to bind no captive’s chain, | |
| Pursued no rapine, strewed no wreck with slain; | |
| And, save that in the deep themselves lie low, | |
| His heroes plucked no wreath from human woe. | |
| ’T was his the earth’s remotest bound to scan, | 25 |
| Conciliating with gifts barbaric man,— | |
| Enrich the world’s contemporaneous mind, | |
| And amplify the picture of mankind. | |
| Far on the vast Pacific, midst those isles, | |
| O’er which the earliest morn of Asia smiles, | 30 |
| He sounded and gave charts to many a shore | |
| And gulf of ocean new to nautic lore; | |
| Yet he that led discovery o’er the wave | |
| Still fills himself an undiscovered grave. | |
| He came not back,—Conjecture’s cheek grew pale, | 35 |
| Year after year,—in no propitious gale | |
| His lilied banner held its homeward way, | |
| And Science saddened at her martyr’s stay. | |
| |
| An age elapsed,—no wreck told where or when | |
| The chief went down with all his gallant men, | 40 |
| Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood | |
| He perished, or by wilder men of blood: | |
| The shuddering Fancy only guessed his doom, | |
| And Doubt to Sorrow gave but deeper gloom. | |
| An age elapsed,—when men were dead or gray, | 45 |
| Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day, | |
| Fame traced, on Mannicolo’s shore, at last, | |
| The boiling surge had mounted o’er his mast, | |
| The islesmen told of some surviving men, | |
| But Christian eyes beheld them ne’er again. | 50 |
| Sad bourn of all his toils—with all his band— | |
| To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand! | |
| Yet what is all that fires a hero’s scorn | |
| Of death?—the hope to live in hearts unborn: | |
| Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath, | 55 |
| But worth—foretasting fame, that follows death. | |
| That worth had La Pérouse,—that meed he won; | |
| He sleeps,—his life’s long stormy watch is done. | |
| In the great deep, whose boundaries and space | |
| He measured, Fate ordained his resting-place; | 60 |
| But bade his fame, like the ocean rolling o’er | |
| His relics, visit every earthly shore. | |
| Fair Science, on that ocean’s azure robe, | |
| Still writes his name in picturing the globe, | |
| And paints (what fairer wreath could glory twine?) | 65 |
| His watery course,—a world-encircling line. | |
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