APPENDIX 231 



O'er mossy live-oaks, high palmetto shades, 

 The cypressed lakelets of the everglades; 

 O'er rivers dead, and still pines' colonnades, 

 Where sweet the jessamine grows; 



Where red blooms flame amid the trailing moss, 

 And streams unnumbered low lianas cross; 

 Wild-orange groves, where in their nests of floss 

 The sun-birds find repose. 



But hark! what sound upon the stillness breaks? 

 A rifle-shot — a boatman on the lakes, 

 An Ibis' wing above in silver flakes — 

 A white bird downward falls ! 



O Ibis, Ibis, of the tropic skies, 

 For whom the arches of the sunsets rise! 

 God made this world to be thy paradise, 

 Thy Eden without walls. 



O Ibis dead, that on the dark lake floats, 

 Whose dimming eyes see not the sportsmen's boats, 

 O'er whose torn wing some brutal instinct gloats, 

 I wonder if in thee 



Live not some spirit — so the Egyptian thought — 

 Some inner life from Life's great fountain brought, 

 Something divine from God's great goodness caught, 

 Some immortality? 



Are all these paradises dead to thee — 

 The cool savanna and the purple sea, 

 The air, thy ocean, where thou wanderest free — 

 I wonder, are they dead? 



