Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments By Frederic W. H. Myers: Edited by his Wife Eveleen Myers |
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 | Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments |  |
“Ah dreamers!” some will say, “whose wildered ken
Shapes in the mist a Hope denied to men!
Too happy! hard to find and hard to keep
Such mythic haven in the guideless deep!
Ye think ye find; and men there are who thus
Themselves the enchanted isle Aprositus
Have seen from Teneriffe; to them was known
The eastward shadow of its phantasmal cone,
And the blue promontory, and vale that fills
That interspace of visionary hills;—
They saw them plain; yet all the while they wist
That San Borondon is but of the mist,
And such bold sailors as have thither prest
Come bootless back from the unrewarding quest;
Or if, they say, they touch it, they are driven
Far forth by all the angered winds of heaven,
And nevermore win thither, nevermore
Tread with firm feet that legendary shore,
Retrack the confluent billows, or survey
From poop or prow the innavigable way.”
Shapes in the mist a Hope denied to men!
Too happy! hard to find and hard to keep
Such mythic haven in the guideless deep!
Ye think ye find; and men there are who thus
Themselves the enchanted isle Aprositus
Have seen from Teneriffe; to them was known
The eastward shadow of its phantasmal cone,
And the blue promontory, and vale that fills
That interspace of visionary hills;—
300
That San Borondon is but of the mist,
And such bold sailors as have thither prest
Come bootless back from the unrewarding quest;
Or if, they say, they touch it, they are driven
Far forth by all the angered winds of heaven,
And nevermore win thither, nevermore
Tread with firm feet that legendary shore,
Retrack the confluent billows, or survey
From poop or prow the innavigable way.”
| Collected Poems: With Autobiographical and Critical Fragments | |