Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HAPPY ISLES, by WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HAPPY ISLES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How comes the spring in those far lands of yours?
Last Line: And on their crest the calm of sunset.
Subject(s): Islands; Soul; Spring; Tears


How comes the spring in those far lands of yours?
Tremulous as here -- and full of wings?
Full, too, of secrets and the hint
Of half divine events?
Do twilights there unfold
Blue shadow petals to the swarm of stars?
And does the hem of rapture darkness wears
Glisten, as here, with tears?

This hour that we loved most,
My long forgetting like a garment falls.
How long away! From you how long!
Failure and tears and strife,
The intermittent bubbling up
Of that deep loneliness
All know, yet know not to resist --
These come, but coming, wake not surely in my heart
Its lack of you.

But yours, yours always, are the Happy Isles!
Their transient, fortuitous discovery --
Rarer each year that sears and falls --
Brings back the need of you.
And every failing breath sent from their shores
Seems meant for two.
Let but the darkling hour as now
Move mystical upon the tides of spring,
And from the vague horizon's verge they rise.
The air is unheard music that we knew;
Ahead, familiarly, the purple shallows shine;
I turn, I turn
To whom alone with me is sovereign there,
And, missing you,
Miss, too, the opal of their magic coves,
And scant the fugitive, bland hour.

But no! that thought would shade your eyes,
Tho' fresh with immortality.
Oh, think not you can ever bring me pain --
Or pain such only as clear sunsets cast;
Their shining wings uplift us and their peace seems home,
But sadness is their soul,
And all their lustral loveliness wells up from tears.

Perhaps, there, too, in those far lands of yours,
Springtime comes flowing like a tide of dreams,
Mysterious, on bluer wings,
Laving in magic more profound the curve of lovelier shores.
Yet, even there, perhaps,
Your unaccustomed eyes yearn back
Across the spirit-footed ocean of the air,
And you are homesick for the earth,
Twilight, and stars that are not worlds but flowers --
Homesick, perhaps, tho' Paradise be yours,
For me and for those isles. . . .
They fade; the world returns,
And with them fades
The conjured vision of your biding place.
Soon may they come again;
Soon; on the waters blue of twilight,
Tremulous, full of wings,
The purple of unrisen stars about their base,
And on their crest the calm of sunset.





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