My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

296 MY LIFE:;——wished to see something. I gave him the names ofone or two mediums whom I believed to be quitetrustworthy, but whether he ever had any sittingswith them I did not hear.Then we talked a little about the tropics and ofthe scenery of the Eastern islands ;and, taking downa volume he read, in his fine, deep, chanting voice,his description of Enoch Arden's island" The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawnsAnd winding glades high up like ways to heaven,The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,The lightning flash of insect or of bird,The lustre of the long convolvulusesThat coiled around the stately stems, and ranEv'n to the limit of the land, the glowsAnd glories of the broad belt of the world,All these he saw ; but what he fain had seenHe could not see, the kindly human face,Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heardThe myriad shriek of wheeling ocean fowl.The league-long roller thundering on the beach.The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'dAnd blossom'd to the zenith, or the sweepOf some precipitous rivulet to the wave.As down the shore he ranged, or all day longSat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sailNo sail from day to day, but every dayThe sunrise broken into scarlet shaftsAmong the palms and ferns and precipices ;The blaze upon the waters to the east ;The blaze upon his island overhead ;The blaze upon the waters to the westThen the great stars that globed themselves in heaven.The hoUower-bellowing ocean, and againThe scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail."Then he closed the book and asked me if thatdescription was in any way untrue to nature. I toldhim that so far as I knew from the islands I had seenon the western borders of the Pacific, it gave astrikingly true general description of the vegetation