Softly we shake into the gulf of blue,

And lost horizons float into our view.

With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear,

Seas that are somewhere but that are not here.

Swifter and more ethereal than the wind,

The fair pale panorama rolls behind.

A sweep of glimmering immobility;

Pass back and there beyond unfolds the sea.

Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness,

And licking islands in their fierce caress.

Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine,

Phantasmal silver in the night's soft shine.

 Ah, these fair woods the spirit crosses, These quiet lakes, these stretched dreaming fields, These undulate downs with piny bosses Pointing the ridges of their sloping shields. These valleys and these heights that screen them, These tawnier sands where grass and tree are not, Ah, we have known them, we have seen them Long, long ago or ever we forgot; We know them all, these placid countries, And what the pathway is and what the goal; These are the gates and these the sentries That guard the ancient fortress of the soul. And onward speed we flying, flying, Over the sundering worlds of hill and plain To where they rear their heads undying The unnamed mountains of old days again. The snows upon their calm still summits, The chasms, the lines of trees that foot the snow, Curving like inky frozen comets, Into the forest-ocean spread below. The glisten where the peaks are hoarest, The soundless darkness of the sunken vales, The folding leagues of shadowy forest, Wave beyond wave till all distinctness fails. So invulnerable it is, so deathless, So floods the air the loveliness of it, That we stay dazzled, rapt and breathless, Our beings ebbing to the infinite. There as we pause, there as we hover, 

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