Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thy apple-blossoms, balmy bright,
Were comfort to a sickly sight,
Too often hurt by inward woe
And searching things that none may know;
To linger on thy haunted knoll
And hear the sacred legends toll,
Toll with a faint and phantom chime
Across the misty meads of Time,

Would calm the spirit's tossing sea,
Lulled as the Lake of Galilee,
When to the surface of the deep
Was called the underlying sleep.

None other way the weary soul
Shall leave the sound and sight of dole,
Than here in fancy to refashion
Far ages of a purer passion
Than any that now moves the heart
In camp or council, church or mart:
To pour again the mystic mere
Round Arthur's grave; again to hear
The monks their solemn psalms intone
In dim arcades of carven stone;
To vow again, ere faith shall fail,
Achievement of the Holy Grail.

Such was my vision of the years,
Now shadowed by a mist of tears,
Avilion, Island of the Blest;
Ah, would that here I had my rest!