Like some enchanted ancient argosy
Drunkenly blundering over seas of dream
Past unimagined isles of mystery, Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,
And sunbeams float and toss across the bare
Rose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam
Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;
Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloom
Heaving its purple through the high bright air
Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloom
From mossy crag to crag and crest to crest
Untroubled by the valley's depth of doom.
The hawk dropped down into the pine-forest
And, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wings
Blossomwise over her winsome secret nest.
Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy sings
Out of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,
Or in the floating starlight faintly rings
The frail blue hare-bells—turn again, and turn,
Under and over, the silvery crescents cry
To where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn
And with a deeper softer peal reply,
There came a ripple of music through the roses
That rustled on the dimmest rim of sky
Where many a frame of fretted leaves encloses
For lovers wandering in the fern-wet wood
An arch of summer sea that softly dozes
As if all mysteries were understood:
Yrma, my queen, what love could understand
That faint sweet music, God saith all is good,
As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,
Over the blithe blue hills and far away
Wandered into their own green fairyland?