is native fruits and skies and sun,
He bade adieu.

"For these he changed the smoke of turf,
A heathery land and misty sky,
And turned on rocks and raging surf
His golden eye.

"But, petted, in our climate cold
He lived and chattered many a day,
Until, with age, from green and gold
His wings grew gray.

"At last, when, blind, and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laughed, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come
To Mulla's shore.

"He hailed the bird in Spanish speech;
The bird in Spanish speech replied,
Flapped round his cage with joyous screech,
Dropped down, and died."

If perfect sunshine, gentle breezes, and a smooth sea could lure one
into unconsciousness of the surrounding desolation and into
forgetfulness of the elemental warfare to which these Hebridean regions
are exposed, we had complete antidotes to melancholy or dread, so
perfect was the day chosen for our excursion; and yet I never think of
that part of our passage in which we threaded the islands lying north of
Staffa without a gentle shade of sadness mingling with my recollections.
But that the sage Johnson, the romantic Campbell, and the unreflecting
parrot all indorse these emotions as instinctive, I should feel bound in
honor (honor to the landscape) to ascribe them to that occasional thrill
of homesickness which I have known take possession of me in the crowded
streets of London or Edinburgh as well as here, making me inwardly
exclaim, like the old woman from the wilds of Vermont, on her first
visit to the metropolis, "All this may be very fine, but I wonder the
folks can bear to live so far away."

That I was the victim of a momentary sense of exile is rendered the more
probable from the fact that about this time Christie was stretched in
the cabin below, a victim to sea-sickness, in spite of the comparatively
smooth sea, and that the Bailie had gone forward to smoke a pipe, thus
leaving me alone with my meditations. That they were not wholly of the
regretful or sentimental cast is evident, however, from the fact that I
improved this opportunity to indulge in more than one observation upon
the company, my gossip (that is, my imagination) and I making many a
little comment on my human surroundings, especially those three
specimens of English girls whom, as I had met them once before, I was
beginning to recognize as acquaintances.