Isle of beauty, thou art singing
To my sense a sweet refrain;
To my busy mem'ry bringing
Forms that I would see again.
Glows the charm of thy reflecting
In the moral that it brings?
Nature with the mind connecting,
Gave the artist's fancy, wings.
Work unseen 'mid human debris
Is a mental work I ween—
Christian Science all unweary,
Lighting up this mortal scene.
Work ill done within the misty
Mine of human thoughts, we see
Soon abandoned when the master
Crowns life's Cliff for such as we.
Students twelve he maketh e'en thus,
All who fish in waters deep,
'Till the buried treasures hail us
Out of mighty urns complete.
Mind hath bathed this isthmus lordling
In a beauty strong and meek
As the rock, and footsteps tending
To the plane of Truth we seek.
Isle of beauty, thou art teaching
Lessons long and grand to-night,
To my heart that would be bleaching
To thy whiteness, Cliff of Wight.
