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(Excerpt)
DOWN in the Tropic sea, | |
| Where the water is warm and deep, | |
| There are gardens fairer than any bee | |
| Ever saw in its honeyed sleep. | |
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| Flowers of crimson bright, | 5 |
| And green and purple and blue, | |
| In the waters deep which the golden light | |
| Of the sun sinks softly through. | |
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| And many a proud ship sails, | |
| And many a sea-bird flies, | 10 |
| And fishes swim with silvery scales, | |
| Above where that garden lies. * * * * * | |
| You have seen the bright red stem | |
| Of the wondrous coral tree; | |
| But its living flowers,—you saw not them,— | 15 |
| They died beneath the sea. | |
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| You have seen the coral white, | |
| The ghastly skeleton; | |
| But the living flowers were a fairer sight | |
| That used to grow thereon. * * * * * | 20 |
| When the lovely flowers are dead, | |
| And their substance wastes away, | |
| Their skeletons lie on the ocean’s bed | |
| Like wrecks in slow decay. | |
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| And over their delicate bones, | 25 |
| The streams of the lower deep | |
| Lay sand and shell and polished stones | |
| In many a little heap. * * * * * | |
| And this goes on and on, | |
| And the creatures bloom and grow, | 30 |
| Till the mass of death they rest upon | |
| Comes upward from below. | |
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| And reefs of barren rocks, | |
| In blue unfathomed seas, | |
| Give rest to the feet of emigrant flocks, | 35 |
| But have no grass nor trees. | |
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| But still the breakers break, | |
| And white along the shore | |
| The surf leaps high, and the waters make | |
| Strong barrows as before. | 40 |
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| Like barrows made of old | |
| For ancient British chiefs, | |
| Wherein they lie with torques of gold, | |
| Are those long coral reefs. | |
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| For many a hundred miles | 45 |
| Those barren reefs extend, | |
| Connecting distant groups of isles | |
| With paths from end to end. * * * * * | |
| And a thousand conscious flowers | |
| Open their fleshy leaves | 50 |
| To the ocean spray, whose snowy showers | |
| The thankful mouth receives. | |
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| Like the golden mouths that gape | |
| In the thrush’s happy nest, | |
| Open those flowers of starry shape, | 55 |
| When the sea disturbs their rest. | |
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| But when the reef has grown | |
| Above the highest tide, | |
| It is a city of lifeless stone, | |
| Whose citizens have died. | 60 |
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| For they cannot bear to be | |
| Where the waters never rise, | |
| And each one, lifted from the sea | |
| To the parching sunshine, dies. | |
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| And bird or wave or wind | 65 |
| Brings other seeds to sow; | |
| And on the rock new tenants find | |
| A soil whereon to grow. | |
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| And they have other wants | |
| Than the flowers the ocean fed; | 70 |
| The hot sun nurses the living plants, | |
| And withers up the dead. | |
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| And then on the deepening mould | |
| Of many a hundred years, | |
| When the coral rock is green and old, | 75 |
| A stunted shrub appears; | |
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| And grasses tall and rank, | |
| And herbs that thickly teem | |
| Out of the soil on a lake’s green bank, | |
| Or the margin of a stream. | 80 |
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| Long ages pass,—those isles | |
| Have grown maturely fair; | |
| Green forests wave, and summer smiles, | |
| And human homes are there. * * * * * | |
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