Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/16

From towering gums, mahogany, and palm,
And odorous jam and sandal; there the growth
Of arm-long velvet leaves grown hoar in calm,—
In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.

How can I show you all the silent birds
With strange metallic glintings on the wing?
Or how tell half their sadness in cold words,—
The poor dumb lutes, the birds that never sing?
Of wondrous parrot-greens and iris hue
Of sensuous flower and of gleaming snake,—
Ah! what I see I long that so might you,
But of these things what picture can I make?

Sometime, maybe, a man will wander there,—
A mind God-gifted, and not dull and weak;
And he will come and paint that land so fair.
And show the beauties of which I but speak.
But in the hard, sad days that there I spent.
My mind absorbed rude pictures: these I show
As best I may, and just with this intent,—
To tell some things that all folk may not know.