A jeweled tiara, nodding in spray, looks flowery Flozella, approached from the sea. For, lo you! the glittering foam all round its white marge; where, forcing themselves underneath the coral ledge, and up through its crevices, in fountains, the blue billows gush. While, within, zone above zone, thrice zoned in belts of bloom, all the isle, as a hanging-garden soars; its tapering cone blending aloft, with heaven’s own blue. “What flies through the spray! what incense is this?” cried Media. “Ha! you wild breeze! you have been plundering the gardens of Hautia,” cried Yoomy. “No sweets can be sweeter,” said Braid-Beard, “but no Upas more deadly.” Anon we came nearer; sails idly flapping, and paddles suspended; sleek currents our coursers. And round about the isle, like winged rainbows, shoals of dolphins were leaping over floating fragments of wrecks:— dark-green, long-haired ribs, and keels of canoes. For many shallops, inveigled by the eddies, were oft dashed to pieces against that flowery strand. But what cared the dolphins? Mardian wrecks were their homes. Over and over they sprang: from east to west: rising and setting: many suns in a moment; while all the sea, like a harvest plain, was stacked with their glittering sheaves of spray. And far down, fathoms on fathoms, flitted rainbow hues:—as seines- full of mermaids; half-screening the bones of the drowned. Swifter and swifter the currents now ran; till with a shock, our prows were beached. There, beneath an arch of spray, three dark-eyed maidens stood; garlanded with columbines, their nectaries nodding like jesters’ bells; and robed in vestments blue. “The pilot-fish transformed!” cried Yoomy. “The night-eyed heralds three!” said Mohi. Following the maidens, we now took our way along a winding vale; where, by sweet-scented hedges, flowed blue-braided brooks; their tributaries, rivulets of violets, meandering through the meads. On one hand, forever glowed the rosy mountains with a tropic dawn; and on the other; lay an Arctic eve;—the white daisies drifted in long banks of snow, and snowed the blossoms from the orange boughs. There, summer breathed her bridal bloom; her hill-top temples crowned with bridal wreaths. We wandered on, through orchards arched in long arcades, that seemed baronial halls, hung o’er with trophies:—so spread the boughs in antlers. This orchard was the frontlet of the isle. The fruit hung high in air, that only beaks, not hands, might pluck. Here, the peach tree showed her thousand cheeks of down, kissed often by the wooing winds; here, in swarms; the yellow apples hived, like golden bees upon the boughs; here, from the kneeling, fainting trees, thick fell the cherries, in great drops of blood; and here, the pomegranate, with cold rind and sere, deep pierced by bills of birds revealed the mellow of its ruddy core. So, oft the heart, that cold and withered seems, within yet hides its juices.