It is my own loved Isle or Song
My heart has loved so well and long,
Where shapes of dream and memory throng.

I sought its glistening, rose-clad bowers,
And wandered by its streams and flowers,
In boyhood's golden, sunlit hours.

Twas then came one devoid of guile,
Whose eyes of blue, and witching smile,
More brilliant made that song-lit Isle.

Together at one shrine we knelt,
One God we owned, one power we felt ;
Transfused in one, our souls did melt.

We listened to the same glad lyre,
Along whose glancing silver wire
Rolled rivers of wild passion-fire.

Then, at life's fount, the golden bowl
Was shivered, and the solemn toll
Of funeral bells sank in my soul.

She passed where star-eyed angels are.,
Beyond the bending heavens afar,
Beyond the gleaming vesper star.

Yet often, from the arching dome,
Her spirit flies with mine, to roam
In our old trysting island-home:

And there are many forms beside,
With hearts of fire world-veiled in pride,
That come o'er plains and ocean wide
.

A father and a sister dear
Come from their distant heavenly sphere,
And mother, brother meet me here.

And seraphim are on the air;
And troops of youngling cherubs fair,
Whose waving wings make music rare.

And hero-souls sublime float by,
Whose deeds are written in the sky,
Whose names from earth can never die.

Oh! 'tis a soft, delicious clime,
This island in the sea of Time,
Where flow the rivers of sweet rhyme.

And when my heart grows sick, of earth,
Its utterance false and short-lived mirth,
And woe and pain of mortal birth,

Then do I seek the Isle of Song
My heart has loved so well and long,
Where shapes of dream and memory throng