Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/19



Y tale which I have brought is of a time Ere that fair Southern land was stained with crime, Brought thitherward in reeking ships and cast Like blight upon the coast, or like a blast From angry levin on a fair young tree, That stands thenceforth a piteous sight to see. So stands this land to-day beneath the sun,— A weltering plague-spot; while not any one Of all the Christian lands upon the earth, Not e'en the rock that last had ocean birth, Would call her sister,—she, the fairest shore In all the Southern Ocean o'er and o'er. Poor Cinderella! she must weep her woe, Because an elder sister wills it so.