Songs of Travel | Page 9

and it is hoped, by their pictures of strange manners, they may entertain a civilised audience. Nothing throughout has been invented or exaggerated; the lady herein referred to as the author's muse has confined herself to stringing into rhyme facts or legends that I saw or heard during two months' residence upon the island. - R. L. S.]
ENVOI
Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards;?And you in your tongue and measure, I in mine,?Our now division duly solemnise.?Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:?The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate!?You to the blinding palace-yard shall call?The prefect of the singers, and to him,?Listening devout, your valedictory verse?Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,?To the island chorus hand your measures on,?Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,?Night after night, in the open hall of dance,?Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,?Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!?Paper and print alone shall honour mine.
THE SONG
LET now the King his ear arouse?And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,?The while, our bond to implement,?My muse relates and praises his descent.
I
Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing?Who on the lone seas quickened of a King.?She, from the shore and puny homes of men,?Beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken,?Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,?Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.?She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,?The simple sea was void of isle or sail -?Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared -?When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.?But she, secure in the decrees of fate,?Made strong her bosom and received the mate,?And, men declare, from that marine embrace?Conceived the virtues of a stronger race.
II
Her stern descendant next I praise,?Survivor of a thousand frays: -?In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;?Led and was trusted by the strong;?And when spears were in the wood,?Like a tower of vantage stood: -?Whom, not till seventy years had sped,?Unscarred of breast, erect of head,?Still light of step, still bright of look,?The hunter, Death, had overtook.
III
His sons, the brothers twain, I sing,?Of whom the elder reigned a King.?No Childeric he, yet much declined?From his rude sire's imperious mind,?Until his day came when he died,?He lived, he reigned, he versified.?But chiefly him I celebrate?That was the pillar of the state,?Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,?The peaceful and the warlike scene;?And played alike the leader's part?In lawful and unlawful art.?His soldiers with emboldened ears?Heard him laugh among the spears.?He could deduce from age to age?The web of island parentage;?Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,?For any festal circumstance:?And fitly fashion oar and boat,?A palace or an armour coat.?None more availed than he to raise?The strong, suffumigating blaze,?Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,?Upon the untrodden windward shore?Of the isle, beside the beating main,?To cure the sickly and constrain,?With muttered words and waving rods,?The gibbering and the whistling gods.?But he, though thus with hand and head?He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,?And thus in virtue and in might?Towered to contemporary sight -?Still in fraternal faith and love,?Remained below to reach above,?Gave and obeyed the apt command,?Pilot and vassal of the land.
IV
My Tembinok' from men like these?Inherited his palaces,?His right to rule, his powers of mind,?His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.?Stern bearer of the sword and whip,?A master passed in mastership,?He learned, without the spur of need,?To write, to cipher, and to read;?From all that touch on his prone shore?Augments his treasury of lore,?Eager in age as erst in youth?To catch an art, to learn a truth,?To paint on the internal page?A clearer picture of the age.?His age, you say? But ah, not so!?In his lone isle of long ago,?A royal Lady of Shalott,?Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;?He only hears it far away.?The stress of equatorial day?He suffers; he records the while?The vapid annals of the isle;?Slaves bring him praise of his renown,?Or cackle of the palm-tree town;?The rarer ship and the rare boat?He marks; and only hears remote,?Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,?The thunder of the turning wheel.
V
For the unexpected tears he shed?At my departing, may his lion head?Not whiten, his revolving years?No fresh occasion minister of tears;?At book or cards, at work or sport,?Him may the breeze across the palace court?For ever fan; and swelling near?For ever the loud song divert his ear.
Schooner 'Equator,' at Sea.
XXXVIII - THE WOODMAN
IN all the grove, nor stream nor bird?Nor aught beside my blows was heard,?And the woods wore their noonday dress -?The glory of their silentness.?From the island summit to the seas,?Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees?Groped upward in the gaps. The green?Inarboured talus and ravine?By fathoms. By the multitude?The rugged columns of the wood?And bunches of the branches stood;?Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,?And silent as eternity.?With lowered axe, with backward head,?Late from this scene my labourer fled,?And with a ravelled tale