Friday, May 1. The most tender and melancholy associations here are those which crowd upon one, seated at twilight by the burial mounds of those who were once sole possessors of the soil. The yellow-leaved willows wave in the still moonlight; their whispers are in mournful unison with the dirge of the Indian, which still floats over the graves of his fathers, and melts into harmony with the voice of the cuculi, that responds in plaintive notes from the guarango grove. Every thing around you breathes of the past, and of the ruins which time and disaster have left behind.
“Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realms withdrawn,
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone,
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.”
The swinging hammock is the sofa of the Limanian lady. This airy couch, twined of beautiful grass, and died into the varied hues of the rainbow, swings in the cool corridor, while flowers of loveliest tint throw around it their fragrant breath. In the midst of these odors the fair one takes her siesta, while her cheek is flushed with the triumph that floats along her rosy dream. Sleep on while yet thou mayest; a morrow comes when these visions of pride and happiness will take to themselves wings and fly away. Care and sorrow will cast their shadows upon thee, and thou must walk in their gloom down to the dreamless sleep of the grave. But there are visions which will not depart; there are flowers that will never die; but they belong to the spirit-land.