Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/183

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JAMAICA

In this land of woods and streams
Ceaseless Summer paints her dreams:
White, bewildered torrents fall,
Dazzled by her morning beams,
With an outcry musical
From the ridges, plainward all;
Mists of pearl, arising there,
Mark their courses in the air,
Sunlit, magically fair.


Here the pilgrim may behold
How the bended cocoa waves
When at eve and morn a breeze
Blows to and from the Carib seas,
How the lush banana leaves
From their braided trunk unfold;
How the mango wears its gold,
And the sceptred aloe's bloom
Glorifies it for the tomb.


When the day has ended quite,
Splendor fills the drooping skies;
All is beauty, naught is night.
Then the Crosses twain arise,

Southward far, above the deep,

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