Classic Poem

Where are the Islands of the Blest?
They stud the Ægean Sea;
And where the deep Elysian rest?
It haunts the vale where Peneus strong
Pours his incessant stream along,
While craggy ridge and mountain bare
Cut keenly through the liquid air,
And, in their own pure tints array'd,
Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade,
And stand in beauty undecay'd,
Guards of the bold and free.

For what is Afric, but the home
Of burning Phlegethon?
What the low beach and silent gloom,
And chilling mists of that dull river,
Along whose bank the thin ghosts shiver, —
The thin wan ghosts that once were men, —
But Tauris, isle of moor and fen,
Or, dimly traced by seamen's ken,
The pale-cliff'd Albion.