"Ah!--still as one looks on such brightness and bloom, On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom Of a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this, To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss! In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared, The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared, O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright, In beauty's own bondage revealing its light! And when the light dance and the revel are done, She bears it away to her alcove alone, Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice, In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice! O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accord Thy care of the captive a fitting reward, And never may fortune the fetters remove Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!" In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Placido dwells in a touching manner upon the scenes of his early years. It is addressed to his brother Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while the author was in the same condition at Havana. There is a plaintive and melancholy sweetness in these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way to the heart:-- "Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old, The struggles maintained with oppression for years; We shared them together, and each was consoled With the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears. "But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone, We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more; The course is a new one which each has to run, And dreary for each is the pathway before. "But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune, We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep, In dreams which call back early days, when at noon We stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep! "For solitude pining, in anguish of late The heights of Quintana I sought for repose; And there, in the cool and the silence, the weight Of my cares was forgotten, I felt not any woes. "Exhausted and weary, the spell of the place Sank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stole So sweetly upon me, it left not a trace Of sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul." The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by the graves of his parents. He proceeds:-- "I gazed on that spot where together we played, Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind, Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayed In each word and each look of a parent so kind.