Lay in the fruitful valley.”
Let us hexametrize another passage, and we will have done with these fopperies:
“’Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado
On lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alli-
Gator dies in his mail, and the sword-fish never surrenders.
To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epam-Inondas.” p. 46.
I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that “there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of diving as well as flying,” and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge on purpose, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper.
Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped—and passed away—
“How fair was then the flower—the tree!