Classic Poem

She brought one book to that sequestered Cay,
Rhyme's linked sweetness by the voice discrete
Interpreted with modulation meet:
Melodious Elizabethan lay,
Rare lyric fragrant of Victoria's day, —
Outrivaling skill of larks and nightingales, —
Songs from the heights of genius and the dales,
Whose echoes in the haunted memory stay.
From often vesper service to the Muse,
Our hearts, exalted, took a joy secure,
And drank a spiritual solace pure,
Reviving as to flowers the pensive dews:
Religion hath a liturgy and shrine,
And poesy its ritual divine.