But my friends declared that such verses were evil augury; so in cheerful mood we left the shallow waters, and, when out at sea, unfurled our sails to catch the favourable breeze. The laughing morning air filled them, while sunlight bathed earth, sky and ocean⁠—the placid waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully kissed the dark sides of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome; as land receded, still the blue expanse, most waveless, twin sister to the azure empyrean, afforded smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were tranquil and balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet. In comparison with the unstained deep, funereal earth appeared a grave, its high rocks and stately mountains were but monuments, its trees the plumes of a herse, the brooks and rivers brackish with tears for departed man. Farewell to desolate towns⁠—to fields with their savage intermixture of corn and weeds⁠—to ever multiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean, we commit ourselves to thee⁠—even as the patriarch of old floated above the drowned world, let us be saved, as thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood.