of all his ideale, of all the Knowledge

Beauty

and Nature which to perceives. of the Emilia

the shadow. Aus the Ionian Sole and all be are meant té

A ship is floating in the harbour now,

A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor-
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has fors worn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;

And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,

And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.
The blue Ægean girds this chosen home
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,

As clear as elemental diamond,

description of his life there with Emilia in the decemption of

benny,

Shelley at lack united to that for off half of the menporcion It is love reaching the perfect eine, but it has clasped ste wality so wholly. wholly in the unmeterial world of here thought, that be, thought it, which unfitte & him for onin this ethereal wine, cannot live in it save, S. A. Brooke.

the two into one is as ideal as the rest.

will that weakness,

for.

a

Or serene morning air; and far beyond,

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a

year,)

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul-they seem

Like echoes of an antenatal dream.

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;

Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. It is a favoured place. Famine or blight, Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way:

The winged storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight.
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draws aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess :
Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green.
Filling their bare and void interstices.

But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know;

'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height It overtops the woods; but, for delight,

Some wise and tender Ocean-king, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
And envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were, Titanic, in the heart

Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,

Lifting itself in caverns light and high;
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild vine interknit
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems

The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all

that we

Read in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude.

And I have fitted up some chambers there
Looking towards the golden eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die.
Folded within their own eternity.

Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children, haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
Round the evening tower, and the young stars
glance

Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,

The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,

And wander in the meadows, or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens

bend

With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,―
Possessing and possest by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one-or, at the noontide hour, arrive