Page:Poems of nature, Thoreau, 1895.djvu/40

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

THE ATLANTIDES

'The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific Seas.'—The Week.

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,