Classic Poem

CLXXI.

The bountiful life of the jungles was his,
Its grand vegetation, its animal bliss;
The day-life, the night-life of forests he knew,
And the monster-life of the waters blue.

CLXXII.

He floated down Chinese rivers that lie
Above the champaign threateningly;
He slumbered mid opiate spices in bays
Near the pirate barks of the vile Malays.

CLXXIII.

O sweet were the trees! O wild was the scene,
In the centre of Africa peopled and green,
With beautiful rivers that shun the sea,
And die in the sands without agony.

CLXXIV.

The heart of Australia was known to him,
And the Southern Pole with its coast-line dim,
With its tall volcanoes that ruddily glare,
Over deserts of snow in the silent air.

CLXXV.

Where the icebergs flash and grow dark again,
And black crevices streak the horrible plain,
Where the fiery reflection flickers and pants
In caves where not even the white bear haunts.

CLXXVI.

He swung in the air o'er the hanging wash
Of the two worlds of waters that fearfully clash
Round the Horn, where the grim cape with passionate soul
Ever strains its wild eyes to behold the South Pole.

CLXXVII.

He loved most those regions which man had least trammelled,
The southern Pacific, with islands enamelled,
An old world submerged, with conjectural climes
Whose glory was passed ere historical times.

CLXXVIII.

The chief lands of the planet now seem to unroll,
Like a cincture with pendants, around the North Pole;
Time was when the world was antarctic, but now
The silent Pacific keeps that drowned world below.

CLXXIX.

He loved the sweet dream-lands that rise to view
From the soft warm deep, with their mountains of blue,
With the palm groves and inlets and scent laden bays,
That lie evermore in a fairy-land haze.

CLXXX.

He could almost have worshipped, when noon was still
Mid the populous forests of green Brazil,
Where incredible creepers hang from the trees
Their huge-blossomed flags in the stifled breeze.