Classic Poem

All day the island-world had been
To me a finer sphere,
And all that I had touched or seen
Grew intimate and dear;
The world of recollection slept,
It had no power to stir, —
So sky and sea and mountain kept
Me beauty's prisoner.

Far from the human-haunted shore
In sunk and cloven dells,
Deep nooks, where caverned waters pour,
I dipped in iris wells;
There silence seemed a higher sense
Than is known unto the ear,
And life a being more intense
Than doth anywhere appear.

An arm's-breadth off she breathed the wild,
Her face was golden fair,
A Greek girl, supple, warm and mild,
And half her figure bare;
She stood so lightly on the mould,
So silently, so near,
I felt the forest round her fold
A phantom atmosphere.

And all about such faun-like bliss
Was breathing from the scene!
Those aery rocks, that green abyss,
Antiquity had been!
She glided down the dark-stemmed wood, —
Ah, had she known! the grace
Of an immortal sisterhood
Was on her form and face.

Old isle! what handed lovers oft
Wandered in thy dark grove,
With undropped eyes and touches soft,
Kisses, and vows, and love!
Ah, had she known, — would she have fled
And let the glamour die,
Or covert on to covert led
And answered sigh with sigh?

I came where shores in moonlight slept
On the dark violet air,
As if in dreams their slumbers kept
A reign of memory there, —
As if a thousand years ago
Something from them had flown,
Ocean nor heaven no more shall know,
Nor any lover own.