This happy beverage, joy inspiring bowl,
Dispelling far the shades of mental night,
Wakes bright ideas on the raptur'd soul,
And sorrow turns to pleasure and delight.
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Sweet verdant isle, through thy dark woods I rove,
And learn the nature of each native tree,
The fustick hard, the poisonous manchineel,
Which for its fragrant apple pleaseth thee:
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Alluring to the smell, fair to the eye,
But deadliest poison in the taste is found—
O shun the dangerous tree, nor taste, like Eve,
This interdicted fruit in Eden's ground.
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The lowly mangrove, fond of watry soil,
The white bark'd gregory, rising high in air,
The mastick in the woods you may descry,
Tamarind, and lofty plumb-trees flourish there.
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Sweet orange groves in lonely vallies rise
And drop their fruits, unnotic'd and unknown,
And cooling acid limes in hedges grow,
The juicy lemons swell in shades their own.
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