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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  The Two Mariners

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Two Mariners

By Florus Beardsley Plimpton (1830–1886)

[Born in Palmyra, Ohio, 1830. Died in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1886. Poems. 1886.]

COLUMBUS gave a world to light;

Found tropic isles in tropic seas,

Where spice-winds, wafting melodies

From gorgeous groves of orange trees,

Thrilled the pleased senses with delight.

Nor sooner he these prizes gains

Than ingrates send him back in chains.

In thee, sweet one, my venturous heart—

A mariner o’er untried seas—

Found isles of calm and joy and ease,

More glorious than the Cyclades—

New worlds in which it claimed a part;

Yet thence, where such enchantment reigns,

Thou’st sent the wanderer back in chains.