POETRY.
" LE PAYS DE REVENANTS."
(MARTINIQUE.)
NESTLING upon the bosom of the deep
Where all day long tle golden sunbeams rest, Fair as an infant smiling in its sleep, She lay, the loveliest island of the West.
When from his dusky couch the Sun arose In naked splendour like a living flame, No fairer scenes he looked upon than those O'er which grim Death has writ his awful name.
He saw the white sand dazzle 'neath the stain Of rippling sapphire in the noontide heats, The flashing waters of the Roxelaine,
The red-tiled houses and the climbing streets.
The high woods lifted up their arms to him,
And through their outspread hands be saw revealed The tangled paths, the spaces cool and dim
Starred with the blooms that tropic fervours He saw, too, that great mountain fierce and bald, A threat'ning bird of prey with folded wing, Around whose neck the wrinkled fissures crawled, Whose burning eyes kept watch unwavering.
It rose with shadowy pinions, monstrous, vast, Hung for a moment darkening land and sea, Then, borne upon a rushing fiery blast, Dropped with the death that none might face or flee.
Island of mystic loveliness, not long Shall ashes mar the beauty of thy face, Nature, thy lover, will repair the wrong, And soothe thy tremors with his fond embrace.
Thy beckoning hands will not stretch forth in vain,
Thy haunting voice will whisper as of yore, The vanished glories will return again, Only thy dead come back to thee no more.
B. PAUL NEUMAN.
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