Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
The Valley of the Yumuri
By William Gibson (1826–1887)Hung over the land and sea,
We rode to the heights o’erlooking
The Vale of the Yumuri:
Thither we rode, and waited
Till the sun, like an Angel of Light,
Touched with transfiguring glory
The vaporous ghost of night.
While over the sea behind us
The clouds yet darkly lie,
They are silvery on the hillsides,
They are crimsoned up in the sky;
And with noiseless smoke-surf drifting
And breaking on palmy knolls,
With its great drop-curtain lifting,
The tropical scene outrolls!
In the lap of the verdant mountains,
In many a mural chain,
Here ripens the golden orange,
Here sweetens the sugar-cane;
Not fairer the Happy Valley
Of the Abyssinian tale,
And the giant Pan of Matanzas
Is monarch of the vale.
With glistening eyes, as of childhood,
O’er the summer hills I glance,
With eyes that the unfamiliar
Enchants with the hues of romance.
Oh, I stood there, as youth stands ever,
With the morning light on the earth,
Yet near the veiled ocean, shadowing
The mystery of birth.
A golden sunset burned,
And against it the piny summits
Were black, as we returned;
The mountain shadows lengthened,
The sun went down behind,
And in streamers of rosy color
Grew the twilight arch defined.
With luminous interspaces
Of that glory in the west,
The feathering palm-trees tapered
Up from each hillock’s crest,
Than columns of human temples
More tall and graceful far;
Their broad leaves faintly silvered
By the rays of the evening star.
It was beautiful as a vision!
But we passed a gap in the hills,
By a river,—and lo! the ocean
The vast horizon fills!
No more as it was at morning,
Wrapped in a misty cloud,
It stretched to the north in its grandeur,
With the gathering night its shroud;
And I thought of the valley’s legend,
Of the chief in battle slain,
Whose soul went forth as thy winds go,
Thou melancholy main!
Oh, often in pleasant places
Our lines of life may be,
But Joy casts a shadow,—and round us
Forever flows the sea!