Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/648

608 Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,

And swayed the waves, like cities of the sea,

Making the very billows look less free;—

She, with her paddling oar and dancing prow,

Shot through the surf, like reindeer through the snow,

Swift-gliding o'er the breaker's whitening edge,

Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge,

And gazed and wondered at the giant hulk,

Which heaved from wave to wave its trampling bulk.

The anchor dropped; it lay along the deep,

Like a huge lion in the sun asleep,

While round it swarmed the Proas' flitting chain,

Like summer bees that hum around his mane.

XI.

The white man landed!—need the rest be told?

The New World stretched its dusk hand to the Old;

Each was to each a marvel, and the tie

Of wonder warmed to better sympathy.

Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires,

And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires.

Their union grew: the children of the storm

Found beauty linked with many a dusky form;

While these in turn admired the paler glow,

Which seemed so white in climes that knew no snow.

The chace, the race, the liberty to roam,

The soil where every cottage showed a home;

The sea-spread net, the lightly launched canoe,

Which stemmed the studded archipelago,

O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles;

The healthy slumber, earned by sportive toils;

The palm, the loftiest Dryad of the woods,

Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods,

While eagles scarce build higher than the crest

Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her breast;

The Cava feast, the Yam, the Cocoa's root,

Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit;

The Bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields

The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields,

And bakes its unadulterated loaves