<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=396212" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Island: Canto II.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.<br>How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai,<br>When Summer's Sun went down the coral bay!<br>Come, let us to the islet's softest shade,<br>And hear the warbling birds I the damsels said:<br>The wood-dove from the forest depth shall coo,<br>Like voices of the Gods from Bolotoo;<br>We'll cull the flowers that grow above the dead,<br>For these most bloom where rests the warrior's head;<br>And we will sit in Twilight's face, and see<br>The sweet Moon glancing through the Tooa tree, to<br>The lofty accents of whose sighing bough<br>Shall sadly please us as we lean below;<br>Or climb the steep, and view the surf in vain<br>Wrestle with rocky giants o'er the main,<br>Which spurn in columns back the baffled spray.<br>How beautiful are these! how happy they,<br>Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives,<br>Steal to look down where nought but Ocean strives!<br>Even He too loves at times the blue lagoon,<br>And smooths his ruffled mane beneath the Moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>Yes-from the sepulchre we'll gather flowers,<br>Then feast like spirits in their promised bowers,<br>Then plunge and revel in the rolling surf<br>Then lay our limbs along the tender turf,<br>And, wet and shining from the sportive toil,<br>Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil,<br>And plait our garlands gathered from the grave,<br>And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave.<br>But lo I night comes, the Mooa woos us back,<br>The sound of mats are heard along our track; <br>Anon the torchlight dance shall fling its sheen<br>In flashing mazes o'er the Marly's green;<br>And we too will be there; we too recall<br>The memory bright with many a festival,<br>Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes<br>For the first time were wafted in canoes.<br>Alas! for them the flower of manhood bleeds;<br>Alas! for them our fields are rank with, weeds:<br>Forgotten is the rapture, or unknown,<br>Of wandering with the Moon and Love alone. <br>But be it so:-they taught us how to wield<br>The club, and rain our arrows o'er the field:<br>Now let them reap the harvest of their art!<br>But feast to-night! to-morrow we depart.<br>Strike up the dance! the Cava bowl fill high!<br>Drain every drop!-to-morrow we may die.<br>In summer garments be our limbs arrayed;<br>Around our waists the Tappa's white displayed;<br>Thick wreaths shall form our coronal, like Spring's,<br>And round our necks shall glance the Hooni strings; <br>So shall their brighter hues contrast the glow<br>Of the dusk bosoms that beat high below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>But now the dance is o'er-yet stay awhile;<br>Ah, pause! nor yet put out the social smile.<br>To-morrow for the Mooa we depart,<br>But not to-night-to-night is for the heart.<br>Again bestow the wreaths we gently woo,<br>Ye young Enchantresses of gay Licoo<br>How lovely are your forms! how every sense<br>Bows to your beauties, softened, but intense,<br>Like to the flowers on Mataloco's steep,<br>Which fling their fragrance far athwart the deep!-<br>We too will see Licoo; but-oh! my heart!-<br>What do I say?- to-morrow we depart!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>Thus rose a song-the harmony of times<br>Before the winds blew Europe o'er these climes.<br>True, they had vices-such are Nature's growth-<br>But only the barbarian's- we have both;<br>The sordor of civilisation, mixed<br>With all the savage which Man's fall hath fixed. <br>Who hath not seen Dissimulation's reign,<br>The prayers of Abel linked to deeds of Cain?<br>Who such would see may from his lattice view<br>The Old World more degraded than the New,- <br>Now new no more, save where Columbia rears<br>Twin giants, born by Freedom to her spheres,<br>Where Chimborazo, over air,- earth,- wave,-<br>Glares with his Titan eye, and sees no slave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>Such was this ditty of Tradition's days,<br>Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys<br>In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign<br>Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine;<br>Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,<br>But yields young History all to Harmony;<br>A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre<br>In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.<br>For one long-cherished ballad's simple stave,<br>Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,<br>Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,<br>Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, <br>Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,<br>Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;<br>Invites, when Hieroglyphics are a theme<br>For sages' labours, or the student's dream;<br>Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil,-<br>The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.<br>Such was this rude rhyme- rhyme is of the rude-<br>But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,<br>Who came and conquered; such, wherever rise<br>Lands which no foes destroy or civilise, <br>Exist: and what can our accomplished art<br>Of verse do more than reach the awakened heart?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.<br>And sweetly now those untaught melodies<br>Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,<br>The sweet siesta of a summer day,<br>The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,<br>When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,<br>And the first breath began to stir the palm,<br>The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave<br>All gently to refresh the thirsty cave, <br>Where sat the Songstress with the stranger boy,<br>Who taught her Passion's desolating joy,<br>Too powerful over every heart, but most<br>O'er those who know not how it may be lost;<br>O'er those who, burning in the new-born fire,<br>Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,<br>With such devotion to their ecstacy,<br>That Life knows no such rapture as to die:<br>And die they do; for earthly life has nought<br>Matched with that burst of Nature, even in thought;<br>And all our dreams of better life above<br>But close in one eternal gush of Love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.<br>There sat the gentle savage of the wild,<br>In growth a woman, though in years a child,<br>As childhood dates within our colder clime,<br>Where nought is ripened rapidly save crime;<br>The infant of an infant world, as pure<br>From Nature-lovely, warm, and premature;<br>Dusky like night, but night with all her stars;<br>Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;<br>With eyes that were a language and a spell,<br>A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,<br>With all her loves around her on the deep,<br>Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;<br>Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek<br>The blush would make its way, and all but speak;<br>The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw<br>O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,<br>Like coral reddening through the darkened wave,<br>Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. <br>Such was this daughter of the southern seas,<br>Herself a billow in her energies,<br>To bear the bark of others' happiness,<br>Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:<br>Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew<br>No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew<br>Aught from Experience, that chill touchstone, whose<br>Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:<br>She feared no ill, because she knew it not,<br>Or what she knew was soon-too soon-forgot:<br>Her smiles and tears had passed, as light winds pass<br>O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,<br>Whose depths unsearched, and fountains from the hill,<br>Restore their surface, in itself so still,<br>Until the Earthquake tear the Naiad's cave,<br>Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,<br>And crush the living waters to a mass,<br>The amphibious desert of the dank morass!<br>And must their fate be hers? The eternal change<br>But grasps Humanity with quicker range; <br>And they who fall but fall as worlds will fall,<br>To rise, if just, a Spirit o'er them all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.<br>And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child<br>Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;<br>The fair-haired offspring of the Hebrides,<br>Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas;<br>Rocked in his cradle by the roaring wind,<br>The tempest-born in body and in mind,<br>His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam,<br>Had from that moment deemed the deep his home,<br>The giant comrade of his pensive moods,<br>The sharer of his craggy solitudes,<br>The only Mentor of his youth, where'er<br>His bark was borne; the sport of wave and air;<br>A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance,<br>Nursed by the legends of his land's romance;<br>Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,<br>Acquainted with all feelings save despair.<br>Placed in the Arab's clime he would have been<br>As bold a rover as the sands have seen,<br>And braved their thirst with as enduring lip<br>As Ishmael, wafted on his desart-ship;<br>Fixed upon Chili's shore, a proud cacique;<br>On Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greek;<br>Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane;<br>Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.<br>For the same soul that rends its path to sway,<br>If reared to such, can find no further prey<br>Beyond itself, and must retrace its way,<br>Plunging for pleasure into pain: the same <br>Spirit which made a Nero, Rome's worst shame,<br>A humbler state and discipline of heart,<br>Had formed his glorious namesake's counterpart;<br>But grant his vices, grant them all his own,<br>How small their theatre without a throne!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX.<br>Thou smilest:-these comparisons seem high<br>To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;<br>Linked with the unknown name of one whose doom<br>Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,<br>With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby;<br>Thou smilest?-Smile; 'tis better thus than sigh;<br>Yet such he might have been; he was a man,<br>A soaring spirit, ever in the van,<br>A patriot hero or despotic chief,<br>To form a nation's glory or its grief,<br>Born under auspices which make us more<br>Or less than we delight to ponder o'er.<br>But these are visions; say, what was he here?<br>A blooming boy, a truant mutineer.<br>The fair-haired Torquil, free as Ocean's spray,<br>The husband of the bride of Toobonai.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">X.<br>By Neuha's side he sate, and watched the waters,- <br>Neuha, the sun-flower of the island daughters,<br>Highborn, (a birth at which the herald smiles,<br>Without a scutcheon for these secret isles,)<br>Of a long race, the valiant and the free,<br>The naked knights of savage chivalry,<br>Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore;<br>And thine-I've seen-Achilles! do no more.<br>She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came,<br>In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame,<br>Topped with tall trees, which, loftier than the palm,<br>Seemed rooted in the deep amidst its calm:<br>But when the winds awakened, shot forth wings<br>Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,<br>And swayed the waves, like cities of the sea,<br>Making the very billows look less free;- <br>She, with her paddling oar and dancing prow,<br>Shot through the surf, like reindeer through the snow,<br>Swift-gliding o'er the breakers whitening edge,<br>Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge,<br>And gazed and wondered at the giant hulk,<br>Which heaved from wave to wave its trampling bulk.<br>The anchor dropped; it lay along the deep,<br>Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,<br>While round it swarmed the Proas' flitting chain,<br>Like summer bees that hum around his mane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI.<br>The white man landed!-need the rest be told?<br>The New World stretched its dusk hand to the Old;<br>Each was to each a marvel, and the tie<br>Of wonder warmed to better sympathy.<br>Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires,<br>And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires.<br>Their union grew: the children of the storm<br>Found beauty linked with many a dusky form;<br>While these in turn admired the paler glow,<br>Which seemed so white in climes that knew no snow.<br>The chace, the race, the liberty to roam,<br>The soil where every cottage showed a home;<br>The sea-spread net, the lightly launched canoe,<br>Which stemmed the studded archipelago,<br>O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles;<br>The healthy slumber, earned by sportive toils;<br>The palm, the loftiest Dryad of the woods,<br>Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods,<br>While eagles scarce build higher than the crest<br>Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her breast;<br>The Cava feast, the Yam, the Cocoa's root,<br>Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit;<br>The Bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields<br>The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields,<br>And bakes its unadulterated loaves<br>Without a furnace in unpurchased groves,<br>And flings off famine from its fertile breast,<br>A priceless market for the gathering guest;-<br>These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,<br>The airy joys of social solitudes,<br>Tamed each rude Wanderer to the sympathies<br>Of those who were more happy, if less wise,<br>Did more than Europe's discipline had done,<br>And civilised Civilisation's son!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII.<br>Of these, and there was many a willing pair,<br>Neuha and Torquil were not the least fair:<br>Both children of the isles, though distant far;<br>Both born beneath a sea-presiding star;<br>Both nourished amidst Nature's native scenes,<br>Loved to the last, whatever intervenes<br>Between us and our Childhood's sympathy,<br>Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.<br>He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue<br>Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,<br>Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,<br>And clasp the mountain in his Mind's embrace.<br>Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine,<br>Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,<br>Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep<br>Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:<br>But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all<br>Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;<br>The infant rapture still survived the boy,<br>And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o'er Troy,<br>Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,<br>And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.<br>Forgive me, Homer's universal shade!<br>Forgive me, Phoebus! that my fancy strayed;<br>The North and Nature taught me to adore<br>Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII.<br>The love which maketh all things fond and fair,<br>The youth which makes one rainbow of the air,<br>The dangers past, that make even Man enjoy<br>The pause in which he ceases to destroy,<br>The mutual beauty, which the sternest feel<br>Strike to their hearts like lightning to the steel,<br>United the half savage and the whole,<br>The maid and boy, in one absorbing soul.<br>No more the thundering memory of the fight<br>Wrapped his weaned bosom in its dark delight;<br>No more the irksome restlessness of Rest<br>Disturbed him like the eagle in her nest,<br>Whose whetted beak and far-pervading eye<br>Darts for a victim over all the sky:<br>His heart was tamed to that voluptuous state,<br>At once Elysian and effeminate,<br>Which leaves no laurels o'er the Hero's urn;<br>These wither when for aught save blood they burn;<br>Yet when their ashes in their nook are laid,<br>Doth not the myrtle leave as sweet a shade?<br>Had Caesar known but Cleopatra's kiss,<br>Rome had been free, the world had not been his.<br>And what have Caesar's deeds and Caesar's fame<br>Done for the earth? We feel them in our shame.<br>The gory sanction of his Glory stains<br>The rust which tyrants cherish on our chains.<br>Though Glory-Nature-Reason-Freedom, bid<br>Roused millions do what single Brutus did-<br>Sweep these mere mock-birds of the Despot's song<br>From the tall bough where they have perched so long,-<br>Still are we hawked at by such mousing owls,<br>And take for falcons those ignoble fowls,<br>When but a word of freedom would dispel<br>These bugbears, as their terrors show too well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIV.<br>Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,<br>Neuha, the South Sea girl, was all a wife,<br>With no distracting world to call her off<br>From Love; with no Society to scoff<br>At the new transient flame; no babbling crowd<br>Of coxcombry in admiration loud,<br>Or with adulterous whisper to alloy<br>Her duty, and her glory, and her joy:<br>With faith and feelings naked as her form,<br>She stood as stands a rainbow in a storm,<br>Changing its hues with bright variety,<br>But still expanding lovelier o'er the sky,<br>Howe'er its arch may swell, its colours move,<br>The cloud-compelling harbinger of Love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XV.<br>Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn shore,<br>They passed the Tropic's red meridian o'er;<br>Nor long the hours-they never paused o'er time,<br>Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,<br>Which deals the daily pittance of our span,<br>And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.<br>What deemed they of the future or the past?<br>The present, like a tyrant, held them fast:<br>Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide,<br>Like her smooth billow, saw their moments glide;<br>Their clock the Sun, in his unbounded tower;<br>They reckoned not, whose day was but an hour;<br>The nightingale, their only vesper-bell,<br>Sung sweetly to the rose the day's farewell;<br>The broad Sun set, but not with lingering sweep,<br>As in the North he mellows o'er the deep;<br>But fiery, full, and fierce, as if he left<br>The World for ever, earth of light bereft,<br>Plunged with red forehead down along the wave,<br>As dives a hero headlong to his grave.<br>Then rose they, looking first along the skies,<br>And then for light into each other's eyes,<br>Wondering that Summer showed so brief a sun,<br>And asking if indeed the day were done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVI.<br>And let not this seem strange: the devotee<br>Lives not in earth, but in his ecstasy;<br>Around him days and worlds are heedless driven,<br>His Soul is gone before his dust to Heaven.<br>Is Love less potent? No-his path is trod,<br>Alike uplifted gloriously to God;<br>Or linked to all we know of Heaven below,<br>The other better self, whose joy or woe<br>Is more than ours; the all-absorbing flame<br>Which, kindled by another, grows the same,<br>Wrapt in one blaze; the pure, yet funeral pile,<br>Where gentle hearts, like Bramins, sit and smile.<br>How often we forget all time, when lone,<br>Admiring Nature's universal throne,<br>Her woods-her wilds-her waters-the intense<br>Reply of hers to our intelligence!<br>Live not the Stars and Mountains? Are the Waves<br>Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves<br>Without a feeling in their silent tears?<br>No, no;-they woo and clasp us to their spheres,<br>Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before<br>Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.<br>Strip off this fond and false identity!-<br>Who thinks of self when gazing on the sky?<br>And who, though gazing lower, ever thought,<br>In the young moments ere the heart is taught<br>Time's lesson, of Man's baseness or his own?<br>All Nature is his realm; and Love his throne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVII.<br>Neuha arose, and Torquil: Twilight's hour<br>Came sad and softly to their rocky bower,<br>Which, kindling by degrees its dewy spars,<br>Echoed their dim light to the mustering stars.<br>Slowly the pair, partaking Nature's calm,<br>Sought out their cottage, built beneath the palm;<br>Now smiling and now silent, as the scene;<br>Lovely as Love-the Spirit!-when serene.<br>The Ocean scarce spoke louder with his swell,<br>Than breathes his mimic murmurer in the shell,<br>As, far divided from his parent deep,<br>The sea-born infant cries, and will not sleep,<br>Raising his little plaint in vain, to rave<br>For the broad bosom of his nursing wave:<br>The woods drooped darkly, as inclined to rest,<br>The tropic bird wheeled rockward to his nest,<br>And the blue sky spread round them like a lake<br>Of peace, where Piety her thirst might slake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVIII.<br>But through the palm and plantain, hark, a Voice!<br>Not such as would have been a lover's choice,<br>In such an hour, to break the air so still;<br>No dying night-breeze, harping o'er the hill,<br>Striking the strings of nature, rock and tree,<br>Those best and earliest lyres of Harmony,<br>With Echo for their chorus; nor the alarm<br>Of the loud war-whoop to dispel the charm;<br>Nor the soliloquy of the hermit owl,<br>Exhaling all his solitary soul,<br>The dim though large-eyed winged anchorite,<br>Who peals his dreary Paean o'er the night;<br>But a loud, long, and naval whistle, shrill<br>As ever started through a sea-bird's bill;<br>And then a pause, and then a hoarse 'Hillo!<br>Torquil, my boy I what cheer? Ho! brother, ho!'<br>'Who hails?' cried Torquil, following with his eye<br>The sound. 'Here's one,' was all the brief reply.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIX.<br>But here the herald of the self-same mouth<br>Came breathing o'er the aromatic south,<br>Not like a 'bed of violets' on the gale,<br>But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale,<br>Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet had blown<br>Its gentle odours over either zone,<br>And, puffed where'er winds rise or waters roll,<br>Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,<br>Opposed its vapour as the lightning dashed,<br>And reeked, 'midst mountain-billows, unabashed,<br>To AEolus a constant sacrifice,<br>Through every change of all the varying skies.<br>And what was he who bore it?-I may err,<br>But deem him sailor or philosopher.<br>Sublime Tobacco! which from East to West<br>Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest;<br>Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides<br>His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;<br>Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,<br>Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;<br>Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,<br>When tipped with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;<br>Like other charmers, wooing the caress,<br>More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;<br>Yet thy true lovers more admire by far<br>Thy naked beauties-Give me a cigar!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XX.<br>Through the approaching darkness of the wood<br>A human figure broke the solitude,<br>Fantastically, it may be, arrayed,<br>A seaman in a savage masquerade;<br>Such as appears to rise out from the deep,<br>When o'er the line the merry vessels sweep,<br>And the rough Saturnalia of the tar<br>Flock o'er the deck, in Neptune's borrowed car;<br>And, pleased, the God of Ocean sees his name<br>Revive once more, though but in mimic game<br>Of his true sons, who riot in the breeze<br>Undreamt of in his native Cyclades.<br>Still the old God delights, from out the main,<br>To snatch some glimpses of his ancient reign.<br>Our sailor's jacket, though in ragged trim,<br>His constant pipe, which never yet burned dim,<br>His foremast air, and somewhat rolling gait,<br>Like his dear vessel, spoke his former state;<br>But then a sort of kerchief round his head,<br>Not over tightly bound, nor nicely spread;<br>And, 'stead of trowsers (ah! too early torn! <br>For even the mildest woods will have their thorn)<br>A curious sort of somewhat scanty mat<br>Now served for inexpressibles and hat;<br>His naked feet and neck, and sunburnt face,<br>Perchance might suit alike with either race.<br>His arms were all his own, our Europe's growth,<br>Which two worlds bless for civilising both;<br>The musket swung behind his shoulders broad,<br>And somewhat stooped by his marine abode,<br>But brawny as the boar's; and hung beneath,<br>His cutlass drooped, unconscious of a sheath,<br>Or lost or worn away; his pistols were<br>Linked to his belt, a matrimonial pair- <br>(Let not this metaphor appear a scoff,<br>Though one missed fire, the other would go off);<br>These, with a bayonet, not so free from rust<br>As when the arm-chest held its brighter trust, <br>Completed his accoutrements, as Night <br>Surveyed him in his garb heteroclite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXI.<br>'What cheer, Ben Bunting?' cried (when in full view<br>Our new acquaintance) Torquil. 'Aught of new?' <br>'Ey, ey!' quoth Ben, 'not new, but news enow; <br>A strange sail in the offing.'-'Sail! and how?<br>What! could you make her out? It cannot be;<br>I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea.'<br>'Belike,' said Ben, 'you might not from the bay, <br>But from the bluff-head, where I watched to-day, <br>I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind <br>Was light and baffling.'-'When the Sun declined <br>Where lay she? had she anchored?'-'No, but still <br>She bore down on us, till the wind grew still.'<br>'Her flag?'-'I had no glass but fore and aft, <br>Egad! she seemed a wicked-looking craft.'<br>'Armed?'-'I expect so;-sent on the look-out:<br>'Tis time, belike, to put our helm about.'<br>'About?-Whate'er may have us now in chase, <br>We'll make no running fight, for that were base; <br>We will die at our quarters, like true men.'<br>'Ey, ey! for that 'tis all the same to Ben.'<br>'Does Christian know this?'-'Aye; he has piped all hands<br>To quarters. They are furbishing the stands<br>Of arms; and we have got some guns to bear,<br>And scaled them. You are wanted.'-'That's but fair;<br>And if it were not, mine is not the soul<br>To leave my comrades helpless on the shoal.<br>My Neuha! ah! and must my fate pursue<br>Not me alone, but one so sweet and true?<br>But whatsoe'er betide, ah, Neuha! now<br>Unman me not: the hour will not allow<br>A tear; I am thine whatever intervenes!'<br>'Right,' quoth Ben; 'that will do for the marines.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Byron">Byron</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=396212" data-title="The Island: Canto II. de Byron" data-description="I. How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai, When Summer's Sun went down the coral bay! Come, let us to the islet's softest shade, And hear the warbling birds I the damsels said: The wood-dove from the forest depth shall coo, Like voices of the God..."></div> </div> </div>

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