Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TENERIFFE, by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TENERIFFE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Atlantid islands, phantom-fair
Last Line: Illumined heaven, eternal sea.
Alternate Author Name(s): Myers, Frederic
Subject(s): Teneriffe, Canary Islands


I

ATLANTID islands, phantom-fair,
Throned on the solitary seas,
Immersed in amethystine air,
Haunt of Hesperides!
Farewell! I leave Madeira thus
Drowned in a sunset glorious,
The Holy Harbour fading far
Beneath a blaze of cinnabar.

II

What sights had burning eve to show
From Tacoronte's orange-bowers,
From palmy headlands of Ycod,
From Orotava's flowers!
When Palma or Canary lay
Cloud-cinctured in the crimson day,—
Sea, and sea-wrack, and rising higher
Those purple peaks 'twixt cloud and fire.

III

But oh the cone aloft and clear
Where Atlas in the heavens withdrawn
To hemisphere and hemisphere
Disparts the dark and dawn!
O vaporous waves that roll and press!
Fire-opalescent wilderness!
O pathway by the sunbeams ploughed
Betwixt those pouring walls of cloud!

IV

We watched adown that glade of fire
Celestial Iris floating free;
We saw the cloudlets keep in choir
Their dances on the sea;
The scarlet, huge, and quivering sun
Feared his due hour was overrun,—
On us the last he blazed, and hurled
His glory on Columbus' world.

V

Then ere our eyes the change could tell,
Or feet bewildered turn again,
From Teneriffe the darkness fell
Head-foremost on the main:—
A hundred leagues was seaward thrown
The gloom of Teyde's towering cone,—
Full half the height of heaven's blue
That monstrous shadow overflew.

VI

Then all is twilight; pile on pile
The scattered flocks of cloudland close,
An alabaster wall, erewhile
Much redder than the rose!—
Falls like a sleep on souls forspent
Majestic Night's abandonment;
Wakes like a waking life afar
Hung o'er the sea one eastern star.

VII

O Nature's glory, Nature's youth,
Perfected sempiternal whole!
And is the World's in very truth
An impercipient Soul?
Or doth that Spirit, past our ken,
Live a profounder life than men,
Awaits our passing days, and thus
In secret places calls to us?

VIII

O fear not thou, whate'er befall
Thy transient individual breath;—
Behold, thou knowest not at all
What kind of thing is Death:
And here indeed might Death be fair,
If Death be dying into air,—
If souls evanished mix with thee,
Illumined Heaven, eternal Sea.





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