Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/282

276 It takes place, like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as the sun and moon, and as sure to come again. The heart is forever inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy clouds in the calmest and clearest days. The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encountered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may sail before the constant trades. But who would not sail through mutiny and storm even over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continent man? The imagination still clings to the faintest tradition of

THE ATLANTIDES.

The smothered streams of love, which flow

More bright than Phlegethon, more low,

Island us ever, like the sea,

In an Atlantic mystery.

Our fabled shores none ever reach,

No mariner has found our beach,

Only our mirage now is seen,

And neighboring waves with floating green,

Yet still the oldest charts contain

Some dotted outline of our main;

In ancient times midsummer days

Unto the western islands' gaze,

To Teneriffe and the Azores,

Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores.

But sink not yet, ye desolate isles,

Anon your coast with commerce smiles,