Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/183

JAMAICA In this land of woods and streams

Ceaseless Summer paints her dreams:

White, bewildered torrents fall,

Dazzled by her morning beams,

With an outcry musical

From the ridges, plainward all;

Mists of pearl, arising there,

Mark their courses in the air,

Sunlit, magically fair.

Here the pilgrim may behold

How the bended cocoa waves

When at eve and morn a breeze

Blows to and from the Carib seas,

How the lush banana leaves

From their braided trunk unfold;

How the mango wears its gold,

And the sceptred aloe's bloom

Glorifies it for the tomb.

When the day has ended quite,

Splendor fills the drooping skies;

All is beauty, naught is night.

Then the Crosses twain arise,

Southward far, above the deep, 163