Music From The Southern Isles

Standing by the sea when the wind comes sweeping,
She hears a sound that fills her with an odd emotion.
She turns to gaze out over the pitiless ocean
That suddenly does not seem to her gray as weeping,
But gay in some fashion she cannot articulate.
She closes her eyes, and to her comes a vision
Of some distant court where winter is forever in elision,
Some court where the music is the song of the great:
The great forests that stand filled with mighty trees,
The great of royalty, unlike any earthly kings,
The great blueness of the sea beneath the gulls' wings.
She can almost feel the warmth of those southern seas.

Walking on a cliff that rears high above the dark water,
She pauses in her kneel, and softly closes her eyes-
For the music is upon her as suddenly as a swift sunrise,
Flying on golden dancing wings around the sailor's daughter.
She can hear the laughter of those courtly beauties,
Whose breath is all the perfume the courtly air shall need,
Whose beauty makes the very wind around them bleed,
And lures it from blowing and its other cold duties
To sing of them in hopeless paeans to the name of love.
There is nothing like their dark eyes and brilliant hair;
There is nothing in the northern world half so fair.
So sings the song that the wind bears by above.

Seeing the ocean dashing far off its waves upon the shore,
She forgets and turns her head to listen once again.
And there comes a melody from the courts of men,
Though faery they might seem; and she hears once more
Of the gold and the gems that adorn their thrones,
Of the walls that shine as pale as the full moon's fire,
Of the mirrors made of all the glass deserts could desire,
Of the combs that are made of selkies' cast-up bones.
All the treasures of the sea and more come there,
To the sun-warmed and storm-green southern isles,
Where the summer nine months out of the year idles.
She catches her breath and shakes the wind from her hair.

Tasting the salt air when she is far inland from the brine,
She hears, unawares at first of what she is hearing,
A tune that the wind has come far inland to be bearing,
A tune of the southern isles and of southern springtime:
A tune of the golden light turned to emerald by the boughs
Of forests as old as time, of flowers more perfect than rose
Growing in the gardens tended by the hands of those
Who have nothing better to do than fret when the wind blows,
For fear that it will tear the petals from the flowers too soon.
There the world is dreaming out the forest-sweet spring,
And the world is covered in life; blooms enfold everything.
She sighs away the vision and looks up at the moon.

On the edge of death she still can hear the sea singing,
And she smiles to herself- though it is a sad and painful one-
To think that she can hear in the waves the hue of the sun
That shines on the southern isles over which birds are winging
To perches and cages made of twisted silver wire.
There they will swing and sing in voices made low and sweet
By the perfume of flowers, an endless forever to greet,
And the loves of lords and ladies to express in tuneful desire.
There the flowers are still growing, and the isles are green,
And white horses are running, and golden birds are flying,
And summer dances unmindful of she who is dying
Not so much of old age as for love of places she has never seen.