AN ISLAND.

My dream is of an island-place

Which distant seas keep lonely,

A little island on whose face

The stars are watchers only:

Those bright still stars! they need not seem

Brighter or stiller in my dream.

An island full of hills and dells,

All rumpled and uneven

With green recesses, sudden swells,

And odorous valleys driven

So deep and straight that always there

The wind is cradled to soft air.

Hills running up to heaven for light

Through woods that half-way ran,

As if the wild earth mimicked right

The wilder heart of man:

Only it shall be greener far

And gladder than hearts ever are.

More like, perhaps, that mountain piece

Of Dante's paradise,

Disrupt to an hundred hills like these,

In falling from the skies;

Bringing within it, all the roots

Of heavenly trees and flowers and fruits:

For — saving where the grey rocks strike

Their javelins up the azure,

Or where deep fissures miser-like

Hoard up some fountain treasure,

( And e'en in them, stoop down and hear,

Leaf sounds with water in your ear,—)

The place is all awave with trees,

Limes, myrtles purple-beaded,

Acacias having drunk the lees

Of the night-dew, faint-headed,

And wan grey olive-woods which seem

The fittest foliage for a dream.

Trees, trees on all sides! they combine

Their plumy shades to throw,

Through whose clear fruit and blossom fine

Whene'er the sun may go,

The ground beneath he deeply stains,

As passing through cathedral panes.

But little needs this earth of ours

That shining from above her,

When many Pleiades of flowers

( Not one lost ) star her over,

The rays of their unnumbered hues

Being all refracted by the dews.

Wide-petalled plants that boldly drink

The Amreeta of the sky,

Shut bells that dull with rapture sink,

And lolling buds, half shy;

I cannot count them, but between

Is room for grass and mosses green,

And brooks, that glass in different strengths

All colours in disorder,

Or, gathering up their silver lengths

Beside their winding border,

Sleep, haunted through the slumber hidden,

By lilies white as dreams in Eden.

Nor think each arched tree with each

Too closely interlaces

To admit of vistas out of reach,

And broad moon-lighted places

Upon whose sward the antlered deer

May view their double image clear.

For all this island's creature-full,

( Kept happy not by halves )

Mild cows, that at the vine-wreaths pull,

Then low back at their calves

With tender lowings, to approve

The warm mouths milking them for love.

Free gamesome horses, antelopes,

And harmless leaping leopards,

And buffaloes upon the slopes,

And sheep unruled by shepherds:

Hares, lizards, hedgehogs, badgers, mice,

Snakes, squirrels, frogs, and butterflies.

And birds that live there in a crowd,

Horned owls, rapt nightingales,

Larks bold with heaven, and peacocks proud,

Self-sphered in those grand tails;

All creatures glad and safe, I deem

No guns nor springes in my dream!

The island's edges are a-wing

With trees that overbranch

The sea with song-birds welcoming

The curlews to green change;

And doves from half-closed lids espy

The red and purple fish go by.

One dove is answering in trust

The water every minute,

Thinking so soft a murmur must

Have her mate's cooing in it:

So softly doth earth's beauty round

Infuse itself in ocean's sound.

My sanguine soul bounds forwarder

To meet the bounding waves;

Beside them straightway I repair,

To live within the caves:

And near me two or three may dwell

Whom dreams fantastic please as well.

Long winding caverns, glittering far

Into a crystal distance!

Through clefts of which shall many a star

Shine clear without resistance,

And carry down its rays the smell

Of flowers above invisible.

I said that two or three might choose

Their dwelling near mine own:

Those who would change man's voice and use,

For Nature's way and tone —

Man's veering heart and careless eyes,

For Nature's steadfast sympathies.

Ourselves, to meet her faithfulness,

Shall play a faithful part;

Her beautiful shall ne'er address

The monstrous at our heart:

Her musical shall ever touch

Something within us also such.

Yet shall she not our mistress live,

As doth the moon of ocean,

Though gently as the moon she give

Our thoughts a light and motion:

More like a harp of many lays,

Moving its master while he plays.

No sod in all that island doth

Yawn open for the dead;

No wind hath borne a traitor's oath;

No earth, a mourner's tread;

We cannot say by stream or shade,

“I suffered here,— was here betrayed.”

Our only “farewell” we shall laugh

To shifting cloud or hour,

And use our only epitaph

To some bud turned a flower:

Our only tears shall serve to prove

Excess in pleasure or in love.

Our fancies shall their plumage catch

From fairest island-birds,

Whose eggs let young ones out at hatch,

Born singing! then our words

Unconsciously shall take the dyes

Of those prodigious fantasies.

Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth

Our smile-tuned lips shall reach;

Sounds sweet as Hellas spake in youth

Shall glide into our speech:

( What music, certes, can you find

As soft as voices which are kind? )

And often, by the joy without

And in us, overcome,

We, through our musing, shall let float

Such poems,— sitting dumb,—

As Pindar might have writ if he

Had tended sheep in Arcady;

Or AEschylus — the pleasant fields

He died in, longer knowing;

Or Homer, had men's sins and shields

Been lost in Meles flowing;

Or Poet Plato, had the undim

Unsetting Godlight broke on him.

Choose me the cave most worthy choice,

To make a place for prayer,

And I will choose a praying voice

To pour our spirits there:

How silverly the echoes run!

Thy will be done,— thy will be done.

Gently yet strangely uttered words!

They lift me from my dream;

The island fadeth with its swards

That did no more than seem:

The streams are dry, no sun could find —

The fruits are fallen, without wind.

So oft the doing of God's will

Our foolish wills undoeth!

And yet what idle dream breaks ill,

Which morning-light subdueth?

And who would murmur and misdoubt,

When God's great sunrise finds him out?