O'er far Pacific waves the wanderer holding
His steady course before the strong monsoon,
Entranced, beholds the coral isle unfolding
Its ring of emerald and its bright lagoon.

At first their shadowy helms in the faint distance
The tree-tops rear; then, as he nearer glides,
The white surf gleams where the firm reef's resistance
Meets and hurls back the fiercely charging tides.

He sees outspread the wide sea-beach, all sparkling
With coral sand and many-tinted shells,
While high above, in tropic rankness darkling,
A cloud of verdure ever-brooding dwells,

With growing wonder and delight the stranger,
While his swift shallop nears the enchanted strand,
Sees the white surf cleared with one flash of danger,
And a broad portal opening through the land.

And deftly through the verdurous gateway steering,
The strong-armed oarsmen urge their flying boat,
Till now, the broad horizon disappearing,
On the still island-lake they pause and float.

The gun booms loud. With wishful eyes receding,
They watch from their swift boat the lessening isle.
The yards are squared. Again the good ship speeding
Sees the chafed waves beneath her counter file.

Long musing o'er his scientific pages,
The curious voyager pursues the theme,
And learns whate'er the geologic sages
Have found or fancied,—building each his scheme.

The Professor's Story.

This pleased him best:—In earth's red primal morning,
When Nature's forces wrought with youthful heat,
A mighty continent outspread, adorning
Our planet's face, where now the surges beat:

A land of wondrous growths, of strange creations,
Of ferns like oaks, of saurians huge and dire,
Of marshes vast, their dreary habitations,
Of mountains flaming with primeval fire.

At length, by some supernal fiat banished,
The land sank down in one great cataclysm;
The vales, the plains, the mountains slowly vanished,
Buried and quenched in the wide sea's abysm.

'Twas then (so ran the scheme) on each lost crater
The coral-builders laid their marvellous pile;
Millions on millions wrought, till ages later
Saw reared to light and air the circling isle.

Thus Science dreams: but from the dream upflashes
On his swift thought the subtly shadowed truth,
That all serener joys bloom on the ashes,
The lava, and spent craters of lost youth.

The heart, long worn by fierce volcanic surges,
Feels its old world slow sinking from the sight,
Till o'er the wreck a home of peace emerges,
Bright with unnumbered shapes of new delight.