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? 



