A NIGHT IN CUBA. Youth's wild young feet were made to dance for joy; Youth's sweet wild heart was made to leap with bliss; O revel in your glory, splendid boy, For all the world is craving for your kiss! In Cuban skies, the palm's imperial crest Remember, while that flower is free from frost, His feet have wings more swift than swallows' flight! NOON IN THE TROPICS. A violet ocean and a violet sky; A glistening beach of red and yellow sands; Ah, what relief, should summer pass away, Shake down his dead leaves while the north wind blows! From leaden clouds sweep swirls of fluttering snows! A MEXICAN WAYSIDE STATION. A red-hot sun is blazing fiercely down On red-hot hills of dreary desert sand; Like grizzled ghosts the cactus thickets lift Their gaunt, gnarled fingers, barbed with spines for claws; Thorn-girdled, thrusting from a rocky rift, Are serried teeth of aloes sharp as saws. A stockade wall surrounds a hut of mud, An ancient bucket hangs above a well, The well-rope dangling from a crooked stick; Here beggars swarm, their harrowing tales to tell, Where hobbling hunchbacks crowd the maimed and sick. And here a broken wooden plough is left, Discarded with a battered wooden wheel, And here like shipwrecked seamen, all bereft, Two oxen by a shattered wagon kneel. A MEXICAN WAYSIDE STATION. On brazen zinnias withering blazes beat, Ooze out their sickly syrup for the flies. But here a-swing from cracks of mud-built walls, And here, like Patience, still she waits and waits Who forced her exile from her native sky. The railroad trains pass thundering North and South, Here one by one her golden petals fall, Yet hear no sighs borne on her fragrant breath; O Rose of Patience! Life soon takes your all, And leaves you to an unregretted death. And so, my heart, in patience still you wait, |