xxxvj MESMERISM TO SPIRITUALISM 299 



The lustre of the long convolvuluses 



That coiled around the stately stems, and ran 



E^n to the limit of the land, the glows 



And glories of the broad belt of the world, — 



All these he saw; but what he fain had seen 



He could not see, the kindly human face, 



Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 



The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean fowl, 



The league-long roller thundering on the beach, 



The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 



And blossom'd to the zenith, or the sweep 



Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 



As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 



Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 



A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sail : 



No sail from day to day, but every day 



The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 



Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 



The blaze upon the waters to the east ; 



The blaze upon his island overhead ; 



The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 



Then the great stars that globed themselves in heaven, 



The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 



The scarlet shafts of sunrise — but no sail." 



Then he closed the book and asked me if that description 

 was in any way untrue to nature. I told him that so far as 

 I knew from the islands I had seen on the western borders 

 of the Pacific, it gave a strikingly true general description of 

 the vegetation and the aspects of nature among those islands, 

 at which he seemed pleased. Of course, it avoids much 

 detail, but the amount of detail it gives is correct, and it is 

 just about as much as a rather superior sailor would observe 

 and remember. 



We then bade him good-bye, went downstairs and had 

 tea with the ladies, and walked back to Haslemere station. 

 I was much pleased to have met and had friendly converse 

 with the most thoughtful, refined, broad-minded, and 

 harmonious of our poets of the nineteenth century. 



