FAR OVER SEAS AN ISLAND IS
Far over seas an island is
Whereon when day is done
A grove of tossing palms
Are printed on the sun.
And all about the reefy shore
Blue breakers flash and fall.
There shall I go, methinks,
When I am done with all.
Have I no castle then in Spain,
No island of the mind,
Where I can turn and go again
When life shall prove unkind?
Up, sluggard soul! and far from here
Our mountain forest seek;
Or nigh enchanted island, steer
Down the desired creek.[1]
- ↑ To these lines, which Stevenson wrote in one of his note books, he added the following verses which, although in a different meter, seem to be a continuation of the same thought.
There, where I never was,
There no moral laws,
Pleasures as thick as haws
Bloom on the bush!
Incomes and honours grow
Thick on the hills.
O naught the iron horse avails,
And naught the enormous ship.
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