Surely From Time To Time, For Its Vestiges Never
Depart, It Floats Through Our Atmosphere.
It takes place, like
vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but
always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as the
sun and moon, and as sure to come again.
The heart is forever
inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, these never
failing, never quite deceiving visions, like the bright and
fleecy clouds in the calmest and clearest days. The Friend is
some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific
seas. Many are the dangers to be encountered, equinoctial gales
and coral reefs, ere he may sail before the constant trades. But
who would not sail through mutiny and storm, even over Atlantic
waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continent
man? The imagination still clings to the faintest tradition of
THE ATLANTIDES.
The smothered streams of love, which flow
More bright than Phlegethon, more low,
Island us ever, like the sea,
In an Atlantic mystery.
Our fabled shores none ever reach,
No mariner has found our beach,
Scarcely our mirage now is seen,
And neighboring waves with floating green,
Yet still the oldest charts contain
Some dotted outline of our main;
In ancient times midsummer days
Unto the western islands' gaze,
To Teneriffe and the Azores,
Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores.
But sink not yet, ye desolate isles,
Anon your coast with commerce smiles,
And richer freights ye'll furnish far
Than Africa or Malabar.
Be fair, be fertile evermore,
Ye rumored but untrodden shore,
Princes and monarchs will contend
Who first unto your land shall send,
And pawn the jewels of the crown
To call your distant soil their own.
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