I was a Pirate once,
A blustering fellow with scarlet sash,
A ready cutlass and language rash;
From a ship with a rum-filled water-tank
I made the enemy walk the plank;
I marooned a man on an island bare,
And seized his wife by her long, dark hair;
Took treasure, such heaps of it!—wealth untold—
Bright bars of silver and chunks of gold!
Till my ship was choked to the decks with pelf,
And no one dare touch it except myself
And my black flag waved to the tearing breeze,
And I was the terror of all the seas!

(Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore

(Time, Morning. Scene, the Shore.)

Once more to daily toil--once more to wear
The weeds of infamy--from every joy
The heart can feel excluded, I arise
Worn out and faint with unremitting woe;
And once again with wearied steps I trace
The hollow-sounding shore. The swelling waves
Gleam to the morning sun, and dazzle o'er
With many a splendid hue the breezy strand.
Oh there was once a time when ELINOR
Gazed on thy opening beam with joyous eye
Undimm'd by guilt and grief! when her full soul
Felt thy mild radiance, and the rising day

'Twas such a manner of disease, 'twas such
Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands
Whilom reduced the plains to dead men's bones,
Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens
The Athenian town. For coming from afar,
Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing
Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,
At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped;
Whereat by troops unto disease and death
Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about
A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain
Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,

The sun, whom Grecians Helms call,

His heavenly path with pride doth tread,
And, to subdue the world's wide all,

Looks round, beneath him, high o'er head.

He sees the fairest goddess pine,

Heaven's child, the daughter of the clouds,--
For her alone he seems to shine;

In trembling grief his form he shrouds,

Careless for all the realms of bliss,--

Her streaming tears more swiftly flow:
For every pearl he gives a kiss,

And changeth into joy her woe.

She gazeth upward fixedly,

Can it be! of stars the star,

Do I press thee to my heart?
In the night of distance far,

What deep gulf, what bitter smart!
Yes, 'tis thou, indeed, at last,

Of my joys the partner dear!
Mindful, though, of sorrows past,

I the present needs must fear.

When the still-unfashion'd earth

Lay on God's eternal breast,
He ordain'd its hour of birth,

With creative joy possess'd.
Then a heavy sigh arose,

When He spake the sentence:--"Be!"
And the All, with mighty throes,

Burst into reality.

Zephyr, for thy humid wing,

Oh, how much I envy thee!
Thou to him canst tidings bring

How our parting saddens me!

In my breast, a yearning still

As thy pinions wave, appears;
Flow'rs and eyes, and wood, and hill

At thy breath are steeped in tears.

Yet thy mild wing gives relief,

Soothes the aching eyelid's pain;
Ah, I else had died for grief,

Him ne'er hoped to see again.

To my love, then, quick repair,

Whisper softly to his heart;
Yet, to give him pain, beware,

Nor my bosom's pangs impart.

Not occasion makes the thief;

She's the greatest of the whole;
For Love's relics, to my grief,

From my aching heart she stole.

She hath given it to thee,--

All the joy my life had known,
So that, in my poverty,

Life I seek from thee alone.

Yet compassion greets me straight

In the lustre of thine eye,
And I bless my newborn fate,

As within thine arms I lie.

Therefore death to us
Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,
Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.
And just as in the ages gone before
We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round
To battle came the Carthaginian host,
And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,
Under the aery coasts of arching heaven
Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind
Doubted to which the empery should fall
By land and sea, thus when we are no more,
When comes that sundering of our body and soul
Through which we're fashioned to a single state,

Mark how the bashful morn in vain
Courts the amorous marigold,
With sighing blasts and weeping rain,
Yet she refuses to unfold.
But when the planet of the day
Approacheth with his powerful ray,
The she spreads, then she receives
His warmer beams into her virgin leaves.

So shalt thou thrive in love, fond boy;
If thy tears and sighs discover
Thy grief, thou never shalt enjoy
The just reward of a bold lover.
But when with moving accents thou
Shalt constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms