X.

By Neuha's side he sate, and watched the waters,-- Neuha, the sun-flower of the island daughters, Highborn, (a birth at which the herald smiles, Without a scutcheon for these secret isles,) Of a long race, the valiant and the free, The naked knights of savage chivalry, Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore; And thine--I've seen--Achilles! do no more.[386] She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came, 220 In vast canoes, begirt with bolts of flame, Topped with tall trees, which, loftier than the palm, Seemed rooted in the deep amidst its calm: But when the winds awakened, shot forth wings 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, 230 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.