The sumac's garnet pennons where I lie
Are mingled with the tansy's faded gold;
Fleet hawks are screaming in the light-blue sky,
And fleet airs rushing cold.
The plump peach steals the dying rose's red;
The yellow pippin ripens to its fall;
The dusty grapes, to purple fulness fed,
Droop from the garden-wall.
And yet, where rainbow foliage crowns the swamp,
I hear in dreams an April robin sing,
And memory, amid this Autumn pomp,
Strays with the ghost of Spring.
BY-WAYS OF EUROPE.
A VISIT TO THE BALEARIC ISLANDS.
I.
As the steamer Mallorca slowly moved out of the harbor of Barcelona, I made a rapid inspection of the passengers gathered on deck, and found that I was the only foreigner among them. Almost without exception they were native Majorcans, returning from trips of business or pleasure to the Continent. They spoke no language except Spanish and Catalan, and held fast to all the little habits and fashions of their insular life. If anything more had been needed to show me that I was entering upon untrodden territory, it was supplied by the joyous surprise of the steward when I gave him a fee. This fact reconciled me to my isolation on board, and its attendant awkwardness.
I knew not why I should have chosen to visit the Balearic Islands, unless for the simple reason that they lie so much aside from the highways of travel, and are not represented in the journals and sketch-books of tourists. If any one had asked me what I expected to see, I should have been obliged to confess my ignorance; for the few dry geographical details which I possessed were like the chemical analysis of a liquor wherefrom no one can reconstruct the taste. The flavor of a land is a thing quite apart from its statistics. There is no special guide-book for the islands, and the slight notices in the works on Spain only betray the haste of the authors to get over a field with which they are unacquainted. But this very circumstance, for me, had grown into a fascination. One gets tired of studying the bill of fare in advance of the repast. When the sun and the Spanish coast had set together behind the placid sea, I went to my berth with the delightful certainty that the sun of the morrow, and of many days thereafter, would rise upon scenes and adventures which could not be anticipated.