It is man in his garden, scarce wakened as yet
From the sleep that fell on him when woman was made.
The new-finished garden is plastic and wet
From the hand that has fashioned its unpeopled shade;
And the wonder still looks from the fair woman’s eyes
As she shines through the wood like the light from the skies.
And a ship now and then from some far Ophir’s shore
Draws in from the sea. It lies close to the bank;
Then a dull, muffled sound of the slow-shuffled plank
As they load the black ship; but you hear nothing more,
And the dark dewy vines, and the tall sombre wood
Like twilight droop over the deep sweeping flood.
The black masts are tangled with branches that cross,
The rich, fragrant gums fall from branches to deck,
The thin ropes are swinging with streamers of moss
That mantle all things like the shreds of a wreck;
The long mosses swing, there is never a breath:
The river rolls still as the river of death.
I.
In the beginning,—ay, before
The six-days’ labors were well o’er;
Yea, while the world lay incomplete,
Ere God had opened quite the door
Of this strange land for strong men’s feet,—
There lay against that westmost sea
One weird-wild land of mystery.
A far white wall, like fallen moon,
Girt out the world. The forest lay
So deep you scarcely saw the day,
Save in the high-held middle noon:
It lay a land of sleep and dreams,
And clouds drew through like shoreless streams
That stretch to where no man may say.
Men reached it only from the sea,
By black-built ships, that seemed to creep
Along the shore suspiciously,
Like unnamed monsters of the deep.
It was the weirdest land, I ween,
That mortal eye has ever seen:
A dim, dark land of bird and beast,
Black shaggy beasts with cloven claw,—
A land that scarce knew prayer or priest,
Or law of man, or Nature’s law;
Where no fixed line drew sharp dispute
’Twixt savage man and silent brute.
II.
It hath a history most fit
For cunning hand to fashion on;
No chronicler hath mentioned it;
No buccaneer set foot upon.
’T is of an outlawed Spanish Don,—
A cruel man, with pirate’s gold
That loaded down his deep ship’s hold.