A land of lovers false and gay; A land where people dread a “curse;” A land of letters gone astray, Or intercepted, which is worse; Where weddings false fond maids betray, And all the babes are changed at nurse. Oh, happy land, where things come right! We of the world where things go ill; Where lovers love, but don’t unite; Where no one finds the Missing Will— Dominion of the heart’s delight, Scribie, we’ve loved, and love thee still! ST. ANDREW’S BAY. NIGHT. Ah, listen through the music, from the shore, The “melancholy long-withdrawing roar”; Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves, The wide North Ocean, marshalling his waves Even so forlorn—in worlds beyond our ken— May sigh the seas that are not heard of men; Even so forlorn, prophetic of man’s fate, Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate, When none but God might hear the boding tone, As God shall hear the long lament alone, When all is done, when all the tale is told, And the gray sea-wave echoes as of old! MORNING. This was the burden of the Night, The saying of the sea, But lo! the hours have brought the light, The laughter of the waves, the flight Of dipping sea-birds, foamy white, That are so glad to be! “Forget!” the happy creatures cry, “Forget Night’s monotone, With us be glad in sea and sky, The days are thine, the days that fly, The days God gives to know him by, And not the Night alone!” WOMAN AND THE WEED. (FOUNDED ON A NEW ZEALAND MYTH.) In the Morning of Time, when his fortunes began, How bleak, how un-Greek, was the Nature of Man! From his wigwam, if ever he ventured to roam, There was nobody waiting to welcome him home; For the Man had been made, but the woman had _not_, And Earth was a highly detestable spot. Man hated his neighbours; they met and they scowled, They did not converse but they struggled and howled, For Man had no tact—he would ne’er take a hint, And his notions he backed with a hatchet of flint. So Man was alone, and he wished he could see On the Earth some one like him, but fairer than he, With locks like the red gold, a smile like the sun, To welcome him back when his hunting was done. And he sighed for a voice that should answer him still, Like the affable Echo he heard on the hill: That should answer him softly and always agree, _And oh_, Man reflected, _how nice it would be_!