Wonderful verse of the gods,
    Of one import, of varied tone;
    They chant the bliss of their abodes
    To man imprisoned in his own.

    Ever the words of the gods resound,
    But the porches of man’s ear
    Seldom in this low life’s round
    Are unsealed that he may hear.

    Wandering voices in the air,
    And murmurs in the wold,
    Speak what I cannot declare,
    Yet cannot all withhold.

    When the shadow fell on the lake,
    The whirlwind in ripples wrote
    Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
    And omens above thought.

    But the meanings cleave to the lake,
    Cannot be carried in book or urn;
    Go thy ways now, come later back,
    On waves and hedges still they burn.

    These the fates of men forecast,
    Of better men than live to-day;
    If who can read them comes at last,
    He will spell in the sculpture, “Stay.”

* * * * *

BORNEO AND RAJAH BROOKE.

Off the southeastern extremity of Asia, and separated from it by the Chinese Sea, lies a cluster of great islands, comprising that portion of Oceanica commonly called Malaysia.  Of these islands Borneo is the most extensive, and, if you call Australia a continent, it is by far the largest island in the world.  Situated on the equator, stretching from 7 deg. of north to 4 deg. of south latitude, and from 108 deg. to 119 deg. of east longitude, its extreme length is 800 miles, its breadth 700, and it contains 320,000 square miles,—­an area seven times as great as that of the populous State of New York.

But though its size and importance are so great, though it was discovered by the Portuguese as early as 1518, though several European nations have at various times had settlements on its coasts, though it is rich in all the products of a tropical clime, and in base and precious metals, diamonds and stones, and though its climate, contrary to what might have been expected, is in many localities salubrious even to an American or European constitution, yet until recently almost nothing was known by the world of its surface, its products, or its inhabitants.

The causes of this ignorance are obvious.  The very shape of Borneo is unfavorable to discovery.  A lumpish mass, like Africa and Australia, the ocean has nowhere pierced it with those deep bays and gulfs in which commerce delights to find a shelter and a home.  And though it has navigable rivers, their course is through the almost impenetrable verdure of the tropics, and they reach the sea amid unwholesome jungles.  The coast, moreover, is in most places marshy and unhealthy, for the distance of twenty or thirty miles inland; while the interior is filled with vast forests and great mountain ranges, almost trackless to any but native feet.  Besides, the absence of all just and stable government has reduced society to a state of chaos.  And to all this must be added piracy, from time immemorial sweeping the sea and ravaging the land.  Under such circumstances, if there were little opportunity for commerce, there was none for scientific investigations; and only by the enterprises of commerce or the researches of science do we know of new and distant countries.