Classic Poem

How lovely the land lies beneath the moon!
Fairer a hundred times than Love or Life;
Fairer than Death, the end of mortal strife!
Now, langorous as lilies in the noon,
The very palms appear to sway and swoon
With this excess of loveliness; and the sea
Awaits, in patience, hushed, expectantly,
For what?-Ah, who may tell?-Or yet, how soon;
mortal beauty irreconcilable.

Changeless, yet ever changing mystery,
Holding at rare times all hearts in fee,
Subduing, sweet, and tantalising still,
What in thy glory may we here divine?
A hope-a longing-nay, a certain sign!

A sign, that of the living whole, we make
A part incorporate, however small;
A fragment of the passion that doth fall
In sudden splendour upon hill or lake:
A symbol, a remembrancer to awake
The sleeping godhead to a memory
Of what has been, and what again shall be,
And still the heart's intolerable ache.
Nay more; a pledge, renewed from hour to hour
In song, in love, in dream, in children's eyes;
Writ on the laughing heavens, the sorrowing sea;
Sealed on the morning face of every flower;
And, even as the rainbow in the skies,
A covenant of God's integrity.