Yet in imagination I may, at the shortest notice, return to the seagirt arena of my adventures, and restore my unregenerated soul.
Limited flagons cannot stay me, neither will small apples comfort me; I have eaten of the tree of life, my spirit is full-fledged, and when I take wing I feel the earth sinking beneath me; the mountains crumble, the clouds crouch under me, the waters rise and flow out to the horizon; across my breast the sunbeams brush, leaving half their gold behind them; seas upon seas fill up the hollow of the universe; I soar into eternity, blue wastes below me, blue wastes above me. The stars only to mark the upper strata of space.
Day after day I wing my tireless flight, and the past is forgotten in the radiance of the dawning future.
Land at last! A green islet sails within the compass of my vision: land at last! Crumbs of earth, fragments of paradise, litter the broad sea like strewn leaves. A myriad reefs and shoals wreathe the blue hemisphere; the moan of surfs rises like a grand anthem, the fragrance of tropic bowers ascends like incense; I pause in my giddy flight, and sink into the bosom of the dusk.
Sunset transfigures the earth; the woods are rosy with glowing bars of light; long shadows float upon the waves like weeds; gardens of sea grass rock for ever between daylight and darkness, tinted with changeful lights.
I know the songs of those distant lands; there have I sought and found unbroken rest; again I return to you, my beloved South, and after many days of storm and shine, I touch upon your glimmering shores, flushed with the renewal of my passionate love for you.
Again I dive beneath your coral caves; again I thread the sunless depths of your unfading forests; and there, finally, I hope to fold my drooping wings, where the flowers breathe heavily and fountains tinkle within the solitude of your moonlit ivory chambers.
Oh, literary death, where is thy sting, while this happy hunting-ground awaits me!
In the singularly expressive tongue of my barbarian brother,
Aloha oe! Love to you!