to God,
For perfect joy comes unto me
Where thy trees' blossomed branches nod.

Thy long sea waves float in beyond
The dim blue lines of sunlit sky,
Where films of cloudy lacework frond
The billows tumbling mountain high;
And shoreward in the still sweet eve
The low songs of the mermaids drift,
As in some coral grot they weave
Their seaweed robes, and sometimes lift

Their long, strong, tangled lengths of hair
Above the bosom of the wave,
While 'mid its golden meshes fair
The distant sunbeams stoop to lave.
Sweet isle of fancy, far beyond
The dark dim vales of human woe,
My bark of love sails o'er the fond
Blue waves that ever shoreward flow.

My bark sails on the unknown sea
Led by a large, pale star alone,
That star wherein her face may be,
Who to that better land hath gone.
O, never turn, brave white-sailed ship,
Again towards that barren shore
But bear me on the waves that dip
And kiss yon isle forevermore.

Sweet day of rest when toil is past,
When hearts can lay their burdens by
And feel the peace God's angels cast
In isleward flights from his fair sky!
Sweet isle of love where fancy dwells,
And nature knows no pang of care,
I hear the music of its bells
Far floating on the evening air.

I hear the lonely shepherd's song
Flow down the green and mossy vale,
And westward all the calm night long
The restless sea gulls sail.
I sometimes turn towards the stars
With sudden shock of glad surprise,
And half believe these island bars
Are but the gates to Paradise.

AT KEY'S GRAVE.

I stood one summer, friend, beside
The foam waves of a distant sea
That muttered all the summer through
A low sweet threnody.

A mournful song was ever on
The lips that it were death to kiss,
A song for those who died as died
The brave at ancient Salamis.

A thousand graves lay in the trough
Of that great ocean of the East,
A thousand souls fled through its foam
Towards the starlit land of peace.

And for each ship-wrecked soul that slept
Beneath the dark inconstant waves
The wind gave songs in memory
Of men true-hearted, pure and brave.

But I have stood, sweet-singer, by
Thy lonely, unmarked grave to-day,
And all the songs thy memory got
Came from the branches in their sway.

Ah, peace! ah, love! ah, friendship true!
No wreath rests here wove by your hands
To mark the Poet's silent tomb.
As tombs are marked in other lands.

But in