Oh, tender touch of one soft hand! 
  I held it then in simple trust,
Alas, ye waves that lick the sand! 
  How long has that hand lain in dust? 
I see her soul in yonder star,
  I see the soft lines of her face,
And could God so unkindly mar
  That angel beauty and its grace?

Roll, murmuring echoes of the sea! 
  Repeat thy sweet, immortal moan,
Drift ever inland unto me
  Within my sunny Southern home;
And it shall be a tender dream—­
  Thy plaintive music thrilling me,
And her star face above—­shall seem
  Like other days beside the sea
  When our lips touched eternally.

WHERE FANCY DWELLS.

The sea winds blow from western isles,
  From isles where fancy dwells and peace. 
Where summer sunshine softly smiles
  And perfumes of the far off east
Float over waves white-capped with foam
  That glisten in the pale sweet light
Shed from the far eternal dome
  Where fair star faces paint the night.

Life must have rest sometime, somewhere,
  On land or wave its peace shall be,
And I have found my life’s fond share
  In yon fair isle of Hebride;
In yon fair isle where all day long
  The sunlight shadows drift and float
And all the world seems bathed in song
  Borne trembling from the skylark’s throat.

O! isle of peace, the waves that kiss
  Thy beaches all the centuries through,
Flow from mysterious founts of bliss
  From founts o’er run with sunny dew,
And o’er thy tree-tops lazily
  The perfumed breezes come and go
With odors from that far countree
  Where eglantine and jessamine grow.

Fair isle of summer, isle of love,
  Where souls forget their bitter strife
And mingled sadnesses that move
  In tempests o’er the sea of life;
I kiss thy fair shore with my knee,
  And lift a thankful heart to God,
For perfect joy comes unto me
  Where thy trees’ blossomed branches nod.

Thy long sea waves float in beyond
  The dim blue lines of sunlit sky,
Where films of cloudy lacework frond
  The billows tumbling mountain high;
And shoreward in the still sweet eve
  The low songs of the mermaids drift,
As in some coral grot they weave
  Their seaweed robes, and sometimes lift

Their long, strong, tangled lengths of hair
  Above the bosom of the wave,
While ’mid its golden meshes fair
  The distant sunbeams stoop to lave. 
Sweet isle of fancy, far beyond
  The dark dim vales of human woe,
My bark of love sails o’er the fond
  Blue waves that ever shoreward flow.

My bark sails on the unknown sea
  Led by a large, pale star alone,
That star wherein her face may be,
  Who to that better land hath gone. 
O, never turn, brave white-sailed ship,
  Again towards that barren shore
But bear me on the waves that dip
  And kiss yon isle forevermore.