Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/16

 From towering gums, mahogany, and palm,
 * And odorous jam and sandal; there the growth

Of arm-long velvet leaves grown hoar in calm,—
 * In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.

How can I show you all the silent birds
 * With strange metallic glintings on the wing?

Or how tell half their sadness in cold words,—
 * The poor dumb lutes, the birds that never sing?

Of wondrous parrot-greens and iris hue
 * Of sensuous flower and of gleaming snake,—

Ah! what I see I long that so might you,
 * But of these things what picture can I make?

Sometime, maybe, a man will wander there,—
 * A mind God-gifted, and not dull and weak;

And he will come and paint that land so fair.
 * And show the beauties of which I but speak.

But in the hard, sad days that there I spent.
 * My mind absorbed rude pictures: these I show

As best I may, and just with this intent,—
 * To tell some things that all folk may not know.