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| ATLANTID islands, phantom-fair, | |
| Throned on the solitary seas, | |
| Immersed in amethystine air, | |
| Haunt of Hesperides! | |
| Farewell! I leave Madeira thus | 5 |
| Drowned in a sunset glorious, | |
| The Holy Harbour fading far | |
| Beneath a blaze of cinnabar. | |
| |
| Then all is twilight; pile on pile | |
| The scattered flocks of cloudland close, | 10 |
| An alabaster wall, erewhile | |
| Much redder than the rose!— | |
| Falls like a sleep on souls forspent | |
| Majestic Night’s abandonment; | |
| Wakes like a waking life afar | 15 |
| Hung o’er the sea one eastern star. | |
| |
| O Nature’s glory, Nature’s youth, | |
| Perfected sempiternal whole! | |
| And is the World’s in very truth | |
| An impercipient Soul? | 20 |
| Or doth that Spirit, past our ken, | |
| Live a profounder life than men, | |
| Awaits our passing days, and thus | |
| In secret places calls to us? | |
| |
| O fear not thou, whate’er befall | 25 |
| Thy transient individual breath;— | |
| Behold, thou knowest not at all | |
| What kind of thing is Death: | |
| And here indeed might Death be fair, | |
| If Death be dying into air,— | 30 |
| If souls evanish’d mix with thee, | |
| Illumined Heaven, eternal Sea. | |
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