Phyllis Isle

LAPT in sunshine is the gleaming
Yellow beauty of the sand ;
Every new tide sends it streaming
Up the edges of my land ;
And I welcome it, as, hounded
Through the thickets of the sea,
It comes, delicately rounded,
Climbing up the banks to me.

I remember, where the thunder
Of the surges rolls afar,—
Where you see yon circling wonder
Of white sea-gulls on the Bar,
Rose the fairest of fair islands,
With its fretted miles of coast,
Whispering coves, and breezy highlands,
Chanting what my soul loved most.

Down the white keys musically
Ran the fingers of the tide,
And the woodland’s inmost alley
Caught the echoes and replied.

All the island — far and lonely,
Until Phyllis made it smile —
Chanting Phyllis, and her only :
Hence I called it Phyllis Isle.

Named it Phyllis, and the amber-
Shining waters, evermore,
As they ran in sport to clamber
Up the pebbles on the shore,
And the wild sea-gulls, careening
On the forelands, saw it go,
And the hemlocks, long and leaning,
Sighed it to the waves below.

But the Death-king rode dividing
His black squadrons for assault,
And the clangor of their riding
Reached the high and heavenly vault,
And the awful thunder rumbled
Through the blackness of the shore,
Till the promontories crumbled
And the island was no more.

O the revels of wild devils,
When those legions in array
From the heights and slopes and levels
Tore my Phyllis dear away !
Earth beheld her prince of glories,
Angels saw their whitest fall;
I with those green promontories,
And with Phyllis, lost my all.

Nothing of those days remaining
In the corridors of mind,
Save the passionate complaining
Of the wave and of the wind, —
Save a voice remote and yearning
From the hollows of the sea,
As the waste of sand returning
Brings my island home to me.