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 240 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, 250 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 260 The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields, And bakes its unadulterated loaves Without a furnace in unpurchased groves, And flings off famine from its fertile breast, A priceless market for the gathering guest;-- These, with the luxuries of seas and woods, The airy joys of social solitudes, Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies Of those who were more happy, if less wise, Did more than Europe's discipline had done, 270 And civilised Civilisation's son!