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* * * * * A HAPPY island in a sea of green, | |
| Smiling it lies beneath the azure heaven, | |
| Well pleased, and conscious that each wave and wind | |
| Is tempered kindly or with blessing rich; | |
| And all the quaint cloud-messengers that come | 5 |
| Voyaging the blue glory’s summer sea | |
| In barks of beauty, built o’er the powdery pearl, | |
| Soft, shining, sumptuous, blown by languid breath, | |
| Touch tenderly, or drop with ripeness down. | |
| Spring builds her leafy nest for birds and flowers, | 10 |
| And folds it round luxuriant as the vine | |
| Whose grapes are ripe with wine of merry cheer, | |
| The Summer burns her richest incense there, | |
| Swung from the censers of her thousand flowers; | |
| Brown Autumn comes o’er seas of glorious gold; | 15 |
| And there old Winter keeps some greenth of heart, | |
| When on his head the snows of age are white. | |
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| Mid glimpsing greenery at the hill-foot stands | |
| The castle with its tiny town of towers: | |
| A smiling martyr to the climbing strength | 20 |
| Of ivy that will crown the old bald head, | |
| And roses that will mask him merry and young, | |
| Like an old man with children round his knees. | |
| With cups of color reeling roses rise | |
| On walls and bushes, red and yellow and white; | 25 |
| A dance and dazzle of roses range all round. | |
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| The path runs down and peeps out in the lane | |
| That loiters on by fields of wheat and bean, | |
| Till the white-gleaming road winds city-ward. | |
| Afar, in floods of sunshine blinding white, | 30 |
| The city lieth in its quiet pride, | |
| With castled crown, looking on towns and shires, | |
| And hills from which cloud-highlands climb the heavens: | |
| A happy thing in glory smiles the Firth; | |
| Its flowing azure winding like an arm | 35 |
| Around the warm waist of the yielding land. * * * * * | |
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