OUR ISLAND OF DREAMS

by Sarah Helen Whitman

Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet never more;
The night wind blew cold on my desolate heart,
But colder those wild words of doom,
"Ye must part?"

O'er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry;
Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.
I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee,
From our lone island home and the moan of the sea:

Away–far away–from the wild ocean shore,
Where the waves ever murmur, "No more, never more;"
Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hear
That lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear.

When the clouds that now veil from us heaven's fair light,
Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night;
When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispel,
He shall know if I loved him, but never how well.

TO ONE IN PARADISE

by Edgar Allan Poe 

Thou wast that all to me, love,
    For which my soul did pine–
A green isle in the sea, love,
    A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
    And all the flowers were mine.

And all my days are trances,
    And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
    And where they footstep gleams–
In what ethereal dances,
    By what eternal streams.