Hark! my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle horn,--
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn;

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldered string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain--
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain;

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat!

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father, evil-starred;
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit,--there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day,

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,--
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag,--

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree,--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.