A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA
My heart was like a bird and took to flight,
Around the rigging circling joyously;
The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky
Like a great angel drunken with the light.
“What is yon isle, sad and funereal?”
“Cythera, famed in deathless song,” say they,
“The gay old bachelors’ Eldorado–Nay,
Look! ’tis a poor bare country after all!”
Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!
The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills
Scentlike above thy level seas and fills
Our souls with languor and all amorous things.
Fair island of green myrtles and blown flowers
Held holy by all men for evermore,
Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore
Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,
And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:–
Cythera lay there barren ’neath bright skies,
A rocky waste rent by discordant cries:
Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.
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