He sailed, in search of wealth, from Ganges’ mouth, But the ship’s prow was never seen again, Stemming the homeward waters—whether, whelmed In stormy ocean, half way down she swayed And swung among the dolphins and the sharks; Or whether, on some calm Pacific night, Where on the farthest limits of the dark There rose and fell the momentary flash Of lone inland volcanoes, some soft breeze Had run her slowly on the coral reefs, And the blue waves had rippled o’er her grave, There was a nine days’ wonder;—men inquired, Where was the man, whose wealth, without an heir, (So lost, so wonderfully won again, After he left the country, by the faith Of an old servant, thought to have been slain,) Was fabulously splendid? And some said There was a Will; all he might have was left To strangers—“to a Lady he had loved.” It was the year that filled the century From Michael’s birth, when he was seen again. A venturous band had wandered in the West, Till far from towns, or any haunt of men, They came upon a region by the sea. Rock-bound and bare it lay; and all the storms That hurled the ancient, white-topped, weary waves On California, since the world began, Had, day by day, and year by untold year, Heaped all their violence on its patient side, And wasted it unhindered;—such salt herbs, Such dwarf and barren trees as the keen air Gave sufferance to, but rendered still more grim The stony desolation of the place. Yet was that soil not barren, or the men Had never sought its distant boundaries; For they were of the eager Saxon race, And e’en their rude and weather-wasted garb Bore mark of civilised life: “No foot of man,” Said one, “has trode these wastes from everlasting: Brothers, the land is virgin; part we here, And in the evening let us meet again, There, by the mouth of yonder natural cave, And share the general labours of the day— See, Edward, even now you tripped on gold.” They parted: in the evening, when they met, Their leader wore a sad and solemn look, And with few words he led them up the rocks, Into a stern wild scene. Far as they looked, Cliff heaped on cliff, and stone on fragment stone, The land’s brown ribs extended: here and there Steep chasms it had, declining to the sea:— Some were the beds of streams, that evermore Washed down the golden grain, and in a year Paid to the treasury of the insatiate flood More than the subjects of the richest Kings Yield to their despots in a century;— But some of them were dry, and choked with stones And logs of rotting timber, and deep sand;—