Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/84

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THE CELEBES.


The sons of God came upon the earth and took wives of the daughters of men."—Legends of the Talmud.


DEAR islands of the Orient,
Where Nature's first of love was spent;
Sweet hill-tops of the summered land
Where gods and men went hand in hand
In golden days of sinless earth!
Woe rack the womb of time, that bore
The primal evil to its birth!
It came; the gods were seen no more:
The fields made sacred by their feet,
The flowers they loved, grown all too sweet,
The streams their bright forms mirrorèd,
The fragrant banks that made their bed,