In the state archives, kept in the
library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished
verse,--some by well-known hands, and others, quite as good, by the
last people you would think of as versifiers,--men who could pension
off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston
common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. Of course I had
to write my little copy of verses with the rest; here it is, if you
will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in
an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them
from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing
upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I
saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus:--
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.
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