Note 64 — ON THE CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO, Near Atures and Maypures.
Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn translation
p. 172—“When his language perished with him.”
The parrot of the Atures has been made the subject of a 189charming poem by my friend Professor Ernst Curtius, the tutor of the promising young Prince Friedrick Wilhelm of Prussia. The author will forgive me for closing the present section of the “Views of Nature” with this poem, which was not designed for publication, and was communicated to me by letter.
Where, through deserts wild and dreary,
Orinoco dashes on,
Sits a Parrot old and weary,
Like a sculptur’d thing of stone.
Through its rocky barriers flowing,
Onward rolls the foaming stream;
Waving palms on high are glowing
In the sun’s meridian beam.
Ceaselessly the waves are heaving,
Sparkling up in antic play;
While the sunny rays are weaving
Rainbows in the feathery spray.
Where yon billows wild are breaking,
Sleeps a tribe for evermore,
Who, their native land forsaking,
Refuge sought on this lone shore.
As they lived, free, dauntless ever,
So the brave Aturians died;
And the green banks of the river
All their mortal relics hide.
Yet the Parrot, ne’er forgetting
Those who loved him, mourns them still;
On the stone his sharp beak whetting,
While the air his wailings fill.
Where are now the youths who bred him,
To pronounce their mother tongue,—
Where the gentle maids who fed him,
And who built his nest when young?
190All, alas! are lifeless lying,
Stretch’d upon their grassy bed;
Nor can all his mournful crying,
E’er awake the slumbering dead.
Still he calls with voice imploring,
To a world that heeds him not;
Nought replies but waters roaring—
No kind soul bewails his lot.
Swift the savage turns his rudder,
When his eyes the bird behold;
None e’er saw without a shudder
That Aturian Parrot old!