Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/110

106 It came into that manly bushman's life, And circled him round with the arms of his wife. God bless that bright memory! Even to me, A rough, lonely man, did she seem to be, While living, an angel of God's pure love, And now I could pray to her face above. And David he loved her as only a man With a heart as large as was his heart can. I wondered how they could have lived apart, For he was her idol, and she his heart.

Friend, there isn't much more of the tale to tell: I was talking of angels awhile since. Well, Now I'll change to a devil,—ay, to a devil! You needn't start: if a spirit of evil Ever came to this world its hate to slake On mankind, it came as a Dukite Snake.

Like? Like the pictures you've seen of Sin, A long red snake,—as if what was within Was fire that gleamed through his glistening skin.