South Sea Bubbles [pp. 310]

SOUTH SEA BUBBLES.
begins to roll and lurch. One feels
nervous and uneasy, and something
worse than snakes seems creeping up
and down the spine. Passengers look
at each other, and turn pale. Now they
turn and lean, and look into the sea for
whales and pretty mermaids!
Mercy! The savage old Columbia
pitches us out of her mouth into the sea,
as if glad to get rid of us-as if we were
a sort of Jonah. A stormy sea is this;
and in this, the winter season, one of the
roughest in the world. Here are indeed
the seas the poet would adore:
" The seas full of wonder and peril,
Blown white round the capes of the North."
SOUTH SEA BUBBLES.
An August in the highlands
Is a chilly shadow of my lands;
O! for an hour of the fervent heat
That nurses the South Sea Islands.
Your harvest's a quick comer,
Your flail a tireless hummer;
The century-plant grows old, and dies,
In the prime of a South Sea summer.
When smuggling bees hum over
Their honey in the clover,
I think of the honey-beds I know,
And storm like a South Sea rover.
When the winds begin to mutter,
My heart is in a flutter;
For I dream of foam and a roaring reef,
And a rakish South Sea cutter;
In spite of all endeavor,
Her straining low lines sever;
A crash, a wreck, and a watery grave Or a South Sea home forever!
I long for a palm thatch cover,
Where chattering parrots hover;
I hate these dreary fields and folk,
And sigh for a South Sea lover.
At the glow of sandy reaches,
How all my soul beseeches
One glimpse of the far-off, blue, blue wave
That laps on the South Sea beaches!
For my heart is full of trouble,
Of cares on cares that double;
And out of the core of a citron gourd
I blow me a South Sea bubble!
[APRIL,
31o