| YES: in the sea of life enisled, | |
| With echoing straits between us thrown. | |
| Dotting the shoreless watery wild, | |
| We mortal millions live alone. | |
| The islands feel the enclasping flow, | 5 |
| And then their endless bounds they know. | |
| |
| But when the moon their hollows lights, | |
| And they are swept by balms of spring, | |
| And in their glens, on starry nights, | |
| The nightingales divinely sing; | 10 |
| And lovely notes, from shore to shore, | |
| Across the sounds and channels pour; | |
| |
| O then a longing like despair | |
| Is to their farthest caverns sent! | |
| For surely once, they feel, we were | 15 |
| Parts of a single continent. | |
| Now round us spreads the watery plain— | |
| O might our marges meet again! | |
| |
| Who order'd that their longing's fire | |
| Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd? | 20 |
| Who renders vain their deep desire?— | |
| A God, a God their severance ruled; | |
| And bade betwixt their shores to be | |
| The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea. | |
