I forget most of the lines--they were probably great trash, but I hugged
them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child.
'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world,
The rich gleams fading in the western sky;
Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled,
The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high.
Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore,
Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar.
After which valiant plunge _in medias res_, came a great lump of deception,
after the manner of youths--of the island, and the whitehouses, and the
banana groves, and above all, the single volcano towering over the whole,
which
Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks,
Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks.
Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at
first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island
beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly
guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not--a
great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it
convenient to say nothing.
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