Her sweet, sweet mouth! The peach-pearl shell:— Red edged its lips, That softly swell, Just oped to speak, With blushing cheek, That fisherman With lonely spear On the reef ken, And lift to ear Its voice to hear,— Soft sighing South! Like this, like this,— The rosy kiss!— That maiden’s mouth. A shell! a shell! A vocal shell! Song-dreaming, In its inmost dell! Her bosom! Two buds half blown, they tell; A little valley between perfuming; That roves away, Deserting the day,— The day of her eyes illuming;— That roves away, o’er slope and fell, Till a soft, soft meadow becomes the dell. Thus far, old Mohi had been wriggling about in his seat, twitching his beard, and at every couplet looking up expectantly, as if he desired the company to think, that he was counting upon that line as the last; But now, starting to his feet, he exclaimed, “Hold, minstrel! thy muse’s drapery is becoming disordered: no more!” “Then no more it shall be,” said Yoomy, “But you have lost a glorious sequel.” CHAPTER LIII. They Draw Nigh Unto Land In good time, after many days sailing, we snuffed the land from afar, and came to a great country, full of inland mountains, north and south stretching far out of sight. “All hail, Kolumbo!” cried Yoomy. Coasting by a portion of it, which Mohi called Kanneeda, a province of King Bello’s, we perceived the groves rocking in the wind; their flexible boughs bending like bows; and the leaves flying forth, and darkening the landscape, like flocks of pigeons. “Those groves must soon fall,” said Mohi. “Not so,” said Babbalanja. “My lord, as these violent gusts are formed by the hostile meeting of two currents, one from over the lagoon, the other from land; they may be taken as significant of the occasional variances between Kanneeda and Dominora.” “Ay,” said Media, “and as Mohi hints, the breeze from Dominora must soon overthrow the groves of Kanneeda.” “Not if the land-breeze holds, my lord;—one breeze oft blows another home.—Stand up, and gaze! From cape to cape, this whole main we see, is young and froward. And far southward, past this Kanneeda and Vivenza, are haughty, overbearing streams, which at their mouths dam back the ocean, and long refuse to mix their freshness with the foreign brine:—so bold, so strong, so bent on hurling off aggression is this brave main, Kolumbo;—last sought, last found, Mardi’s estate, so long kept back;—pray Oro, it be not squandered foolishly. Here lie plantations, held in fee by stout hearts and arms; and boundless fields, that may be had for seeing. Here, your foes are forests, struck down with bloodless maces.—Ho! Mardi’s Poor, and Mardi’s Strong! ye, who starve or beg; seventh-sons who slave for earth’s first-born—here is your home; predestinated yours; Come over, Empire-founders! fathers of the wedded tribes to come!—abject now, illustrious evermore:—Ho: Sinew, Brawn, and Thigh!”