Page:Poems of nature, Thoreau, 1895.djvu/40

 THE ATLANTIDES

'The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific Seas.'—The Week.

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,

Scarcely 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,