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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The Enviable Isles

Herman Melville

From “Rammon.”


Through storms you reach them and from
    storms are free.
  Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
  Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed
    dew.

But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—
  On uplands hazed, in wandering airs
    aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree
  Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here.
  Where, strewn in flocks, what cheek-flushed
    myriads lie
Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers
    mere,
  While billows endless round the beaches die.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From John Marr and Other Poems | 1922
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