POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
101 
If ever it has wash’d our distant shore. 
Thus fancy paints thee, and though apt to err, 
Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus. 
She tells me too, that duly ev’ry morn 
Thou climb’st the mountain-top, with eager eye 
Exploring far and wide the wat’ry waste 
For sight of ship from England. Ev’ry speck 
Seen in the dim horizon, turns thee pale 
With conflict of contending hopes and fears. 
But comes at last the dull and dusky eve. 
And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepar’d 
To dream all night of what the day denied. 
Alas ! expect it not. We found no bait 
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good. 
Disinterested good, is not our trade. 
We travel far, ’tis true, but not for nought; 
And must be brib’d to compass earth again 
By other hopes, and richer fruits, than yours.” 
In the visit of Mai, the experiment, in reference to the 
effect of refinement, civilization, and philosophy upon 
the ignorant and uncivilized, was tried under circum¬ 
stances the most favourable for producing sympathy in 
one party, and impression on the other:—^the result was 
most affecting. The individual who had been brought 
from the ends of the earth, and shewn whatever England 
could furnish, adapted to impress his wondering mind, 
returned, and became as rude and indolent a barbarian 
as before. With one solitary exception, the human¬ 
izing and elevating principles of the Bible had never 
been presented to his notice, and he appeared to 
have derived no benefit from his voyage. Well might 
the poet lament his fate. But the ship Duff had not 
sailed, and the spirit of Missionary enterprise was 
not aroused in the British churches. Institutions, 
the ornament and the glory of our country, had not 
arisen. The schoolmaster was not abroad in the earth. 
