Elizabeth Barrett Browning - An Island lyrics

My dream is of an island-place
 Which distant seas keep lonely
A little island on whose face
 The stars are watchers only:
Those bright still stars! they need not seem
Brighter or stiller in my dream

An island full of hills and dells
 All rumpled and uneven
With green recesses, sudden swells
 And odorous valleys driven
So deep and straight that always there
The wind is cradled to soft air

Hills running up to heaven for light
 Through woods that half-way ran
As if the wild earth mimicked right
 The wilder heart of man:
Only it shall be greener far
And gladder than hearts ever are



More like, perhaps, that mountain piece
 Of Dante's paradise
Disrupt to an hundred hills like these
 In falling from the skies
Bringing within it, all the roots
Of heavenly trees and flowers and fruit's:

For saving where the grey rocks strike
 Their javelins up the azure
Or where deep fissures miser-like
 Hoard up some fountain treasure
(And e'en in them, stoop down and hear
Leaf sounds with water in your ear,)

The place is all awave with trees
 Limes, myrtles purple-beaded
Acacias having drunk the lees
 Of the night-dew, faint headed
And wan grey olive-woods which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream

Trees, trees on all sides! they combine
 Their plumy shades to throw
Through whose clear fruit and blossom fine
 Whene'er the sun may go
The ground beneath he deeply stains
As passing through cathedral panes

But little needs this earth of ours
 That shining from above her
When many Pleiades of flowers
  (Not one lost) star her over
The rays of their unnumbered hues
Being all refracted by the dews

Wide-petalled plants that boldly drink
 The Amreeta of the sky
Shut bells that dull with rapture sink
 And lolling buds, half shy
I cannot count them, but between
Is room for grass and mosses green

And brooks, that glass in different strengths
 All colours in disorder
Or, gathering up their silver lengths
 Beside their winding border
Sleep, haunted through the slumber hidden
By lilies white as dreams in Eden

Nor think each archèd tree with each
 Too closely interlaces
To admit of vistas out of reach
 And broad moon-lighted places
Upon whose sward the antlered deer
May view their double image clear

For all this island's creature-full
  (Kept happy not by halves)
Mild cows, that at the vine-wreaths pull
 Then low back at their calves
With tender lowings, to approve
The warm mouths milking them for love

Free gamesome horses, antelopes
 And harmless leaping leopards
And buffaloes upon the slopes
 And sheep unruled by shepherds:
Hares, lizards, hedgehogs, badgers, mice
Snakes, squirrels, frogs, and butterflies

And birds that live there in a crowd
 Horned owls, rapt nightingales
Larks bold with heaven, and peacocks proud
 Self-sphered in those grand tails
All creatures glad and safe, I deem
No guns nor springes in my dream!

The island's edges are a-wing
 With trees that overbranch
The sea with song-birds welcoming
 The curlews to green change
And doves from half-closed lids espy
The red and purple fish go by

One dove is answering in trust
 The water every minute
Thinking so soft a murmur must
 Have her mate's cooing in it:
So softly doth earth's beauty round
Infuse it'self in ocean's sound

My sanguine soul bounds forwarder
 To meet the bounding waves
Beside them straightway I repair
 To live within the caves:
And near me two or three may dwell
Whom dreams fantastic please, as well

Long winding caverns, glittering far
 Into a crystal distance!
Through clefts of which shall many a star
 Shine clear without resistance
And carry down it's rays the smell
Of flowers above invisible

I said that two or three might choose
 Their dwelling near mine own:
Those who would change man's voice and use
 For Nature's way and tone
Man's veering heart and careless eyes
For Nature's steadfast sympathies

Ourselves, to meet her faithfulness
 Shall play a faithful part
Her beautiful shall ne'er address
 The monstrous at our heart:
Her musical shall ever touch
Something within us also such

Yet shall she not our mistress live
 As doth the moon of ocean
Though gently as the moon she give
 Our thoughts a light and motion:
More like a harp of many lays
Moving it's master while he plays

No sod in all that island doth
 Yawn open for the dead
No wind hath borne a traitor's oath
 No earth, a mourner's tread
We cannot say by stream or shade
"I suffered here, was here betrayed"

Our only "farewell" we shall laugh
 To shifting cloud or hour
And use our only epitaph
 To some bud turned a flower:
Our only tears shall serve to prove
Excess in pleasure or in love

Our fancies shall their plumage catch
 From fairest island-birds
Whose eggs let young ones out at hatch
 Born singing! then our words
Unconsciously shall take the dyes
Of those prodigious fantasies

Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth
 Our smile tuned lips shall reach
Sounds sweet as Hellas spake in youth
 Shall glide into our speech:
(What music, certes, can you find
As soft as voices which are kind?)

And often, by the joy without
 And in us, overcome
We, through our musing, shall let float
 Such poems, sitting dumb
As Pindar might have writ if he
Had tended sheep in Arcady

Or Æschylus the pleasant fields
 He died in, longer knowing
Or Homer, had men's sins and shields
 Been lost in Meles flowing
Or Poet Plato, had the undim
Unsetting Godlight broke on him

Choose me the cave most worthy choice
 To make a place for prayer
And I will choose a praying voice
 To pour our spirit's there:
How silverly the echoes run!
Thy will be done, thy will be done

Gently yet strangely uttered words!
 They lift me from my dream
The island fadeth with it's swards
 That did no more than seem:
The streams are dry, no sun could find
The fruit's are fallen, without wind

So oft the doing of God's will
 Our foolish wills undoeth!
And yet what idle dream breaks ill
 Which morning-light subdueth?
And who would murmur and misdoubt
When God's great sunrise finds him out?