Till the end of 1803 Moore was delayed in Virginia, waiting for a ship, and in the meanwhile writing long letters home full of the warmest affection, and of "longing for news of all his dears." In January he was lucky enough to get passage on another ship of war, the _Driver_, and reached Bermuda after seven days' sail in very heavy weather. His parting from Norfolk had been attended with the usual regrets; Mrs. Hamilton, wife of the British Consul, in whose home Moore had been most hospitably entertained, "cried, and said she never parted from any one so reluctantly," and her husband wrote him all possible letters of introduction. Bermuda itself seemed, at the first view, a kind of fairyland, as he has recorded in the Epistle to Lady Donegal:-- "The morn was lovely, every wave was still, When the first perfume of a cedar-hill Sweetly awaked us, and, with smiling charms, The fairy harbour woo'd us to its arms. Gently we stole, before the languid wind, Through plantain shades, that like an awning twined And kiss'd on either side the wanton sails, Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales; While, far reflected o'er the wave serene, Each wooded island shed so soft a green, That the enamour'd keel, with whispering play, Through liquid herbage seem'd to steal its way! Never did weary bark more sweetly glide, Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide! Along the margin, many a shining dome, White as the palace of a Lapland gnome, Brighten'd the wave;--in every myrtle grove Secluded, bashful, like a shrine of love, Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade; And, while the foliage interposing play'd, Wreathing the structure into various grace, Fancy would love, in glimpses vague, to trace The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch, And dream of temples, till her kindling torch Lighted me back to all the glorious days Of Attic genius; and I seem'd to gaze On marble, from the rich Pentelic mount, Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount." The letter which sketches his first impressions adds a touch of disenchantment, which Moore, remote always from realism, was careful to exclude from his verse:-- "These little islands are thickly covered with cedar groves, through the vistas of which you catch a few pretty white houses, which my poetical short-sightedness always transforms into temples; and I often expect to see Nymphs and Graces come tripping from them, when I find, to my great disappointment, that a few miserable negroes is all 'the bloomy flush of life' it has to boast of."