III.

Content that night no more to see,
The wanderers push off merrily
To what that night their home shall be:
A little rugged isle (another
Beside it standing, its twin-brother
In conformation strange) that lifts
Its verdurous tufts o'er tortuous rifts
Misshapen—many a dip and rent
In rock that—ever bathed, besprent
With oozy hot spring, fervid play
Of steam that finds a viewless vent—
Is softening slow to pallid clay.
page 274 By isles—mere knots of waving grass,
By thin-spread rush and reed they pass;
And fright a thousand birds that rise
From bubbling channel, heated marsh;
And flee in flocks away, with cries
Now plaintive, wild—now hoarse and harsh;
Coot, teal and that rich gallinule
Of velvet violet plumage proud;
That, night and day, each open pool
Or warm and watery covert crowd,
And stalk and strut and peer and pry
With jerking tail and searching eye;
Or plash and paddle, duck and dive,
And through green bills quick-gargling drive
The scooped-up Lake's clear lymph. And see,
Pink-legged, snow-white or sable-pied,
Those strangers from far Ocean's side;
Slim oyster-catcher, avocet,
And tripping beach-birds, seldom met
Elsewhere—come hither, not for food,
But on this warm delight to brood,
This tepid inland luxury.

The pair have left the light canoe
And cross the soil with cautious tread,
Whose treacherous crust they scarce can trust—
Each step, it seems, may break it through.
With springy swelling moss 'tis spread,
An emerald, warm, and soaking sod,
In places; then their way they track
Through little thickets, very black
In shade against the tumbled blocks—
The steaming, white and moonlit rocks—
page 275 But cherished there to richness rare
Of fragrant broom and ferny plume
And winding woven lychopod
Close-creeping—all luxuriant, lush,
In that pervading vapour-gush.
Then on a grassy spot the brake
Left free—just large enough to make
A couch for two, fenced all around
With aromatic leptosperm—
A soft green gapless wall—they heap
Elastic fern and broom to keep
Down to a pleasant warmth the heat
The ground gives out; where they may sleep—
Could Love desire a bower more sweet?—
Secure no noxious reptiles creep
Throughout the land—evenomed worm,
Or poison-snake you dread to meet;
And lulled by that low changeless churme,
The hissing, simmering, seething sound
That sings and murmurs all the while
Add ever round that mystic isle—
May sleep a blissful sleep profound,
Plunged in the calm unconscious heaven
To youth and health out-wearied given.