Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 138.pdf/649

IX.

A day in summer first, and golden haze
Upon sub-tropic seas! The little isles,
Whose wooded peaks are purple in the blaze,
And glittering sands where one may pace for miles,
I conjure up; and, by the river broad,
Just where it meets the sea — a little toward

X.

That clump of flowering grass — (O love, you too,
Do you remember it?) we stand abreast,
Watching old Watu as the net he threw
Across the river's mouth; we, silent, lest
We scare the herrings e'er the tide has run —
What need of speech between, when souls are one?

XI.

Another day, crown of all time, comes back,
When side by side we wander through the bush,
Where never feet but ours have worn a track.
There is your love outspoken in the hush;
Your ring, twined round my finger, set with a kiss —
A tendril from the white-starr'd clematis.

XII.

A short month later comes an autumn day,
When the air's keen and clear, and the far hills
Are capped with gleams of snow. We ride away,
Up hill and down! A deep content now fills
Our hearts, and smooths the trouble from your brow;
Wedded and one, what could divide us now?

XIII.

Oh foolish boast! Oh impotence of love!
Too soon the happy days, the happy years,
Are gone. All earthly gain and loss but prove
Your steadfastness; the petty hopes and fears
Of daily cares, these cannot souls divide;
We smile and say: "We'll conquer side by side."

XIV.

Comes a spring morning, gay with song and shine,
When Death between us steals, and takes your hand,
And you are mine no longer; for not mine
Those unresponsive lips and eyes; I stand
Among the rustling clover and the grass
Where they have laid you; mute, I homeward pass,

XV.

Ever and ever asking: "Where is he?"
Not mine these ashes, or this dust; but mine,
Mine, the young lover pleading passionately!
The steadfast friend proved by long years; the fine
Pure spirit, that these last days shone
Through the worn, wasted flesh — where is he gone?

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
XVI.

Is it an hour only since I went
Out on the lonely cliff, to sit apart
And view those years again, with a will bent
To face the past? Hast thou found peace, my heart?
At least I’ve wept till I can weep no more,
And I shall sleep to-night. …

A. L. L.

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Judging from his report, Signor D'Albertis appears to have carried out his recent expedition in the "Neva" up the Fly River, New Guinea, under very great difficulties. He experienced constant hostility on the part of the natives, and was much troubled by the conduct of part of his crew. In many parts the natives were found to be very numerous, and on one day he estimates that he saw two thousand on the banks. On that occasion he passed a large village where there were more than five hundred people on the bank, whom he describes as "beautifully dressed with white feathers, and their bodies painted in many colors." They wore white shells for purposes of ornament and protection, and had "head-dresses of white feathers of cacatua and red and yellow Paradise bird." Signor D'Albertis discovered a large tributary entering the Fly River from the north-east; but, owing to the various troubles he met with, he was not so successful as he expected with his natural-history collections, but he obtained eight hundred skins of birds, comprising probably two hundred species, of which he hopes that twenty or twenty-five may prove to be new.

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The glaciers of the western Himalayas, according to measurements recently given in the Tour de Monde, far surpass in extent any hitherto examined outside of the polar regions. In the Mustagh range, two glaciers immediately adjoining one another possess a united length of sixty-five miles. Another glacier in the neighborhood is twenty-one miles in length, and from one to two miles in width. Its upper portion is at a height of twenty-four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and its lower portion, terminating in masses of ice two hundred and fifty feet in height and three miles in breadth, is sixteen thousand feet above the sea. Nature