And their’s was a bliss more fair than this,
That we feel in our colder time;
For they were rife in a tropic life,
In a brighter, happier clime.
They swam ’mid isles whose summer smiles
No wintry winds annoy;
Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
Whose life was only joy.
They roam’d all day through creek and bay,
And travers’d the ocean deep;