Unknown Islands

Oh, ships are sailing southward, and the Southern Cross

            is lifting

      Above the singing surges and lighting up the night;

Oh, live barks are sailing southward, and derelicts are

            drifting

      To where lagoons are waiting and are islands of de-

            light.

Oh, I long to leave the prairies, the woodlands and the

            highlands,

      And drift, the world forgetting, across the shifting

            sea,

Where lagoons are in the moonlight, and tobacco-grow-

            ing islands

      Are breathing through the distance round the world

            and calling me.

I long to shed my garments and the civilization

      The centuries have added, a burden to my soul;

Oh, to thread the shining reaches and to know the wild

            elation

      Of the unowned and unowining where tremendous bil-

            lows roll.

Where islands lie like emeralds, and wondrous is their

            setting,

      The blue and purple glory of the tropic skies and seas;

Oh, lands of love and dreaming!   Oh, world I’d be for-

            getting!

      Oh, unknown blossoms flaming ‘gainst the boles of

            tropic trees!

Oh, unknown blossoms flaming—oh, unknown highways

            wending

      Through unkown groves and valleys, past where sing-

            ing streamlets run!

Oh, perfume of unknown spices on caressing breezes

            blending!

      Oh, iridescent lizards lying basking in the sun!

There are lakes that lie like topaz in the midst of sunny

            islands;

      There are trees, tall trees and slender, marshaled close

            along their brink;

There are silhouettes of mountains ‘gainst the sky line,

            purple highlands;

      There are tunnels through the thickets where wild

            beasts come down to drink.

There are golden strips of shingle ‘twist the forest and

            the water,

      Over which the lake and forest in their language call

            to each,

Where some brown son of the wildwood softly woos some

            wildwood daughter

      In the old sweet way we wot of, just as faltering of

            speech.

Oh, to cut loose and go drifting to tobacco-growing

            islands,

      Where big fire-flies are weaving figures on a yellow

            mist,

Where the nights come perfume-freighted from the jun-

            gle-hidden highlands,

      Where are maids with lips like coral waiting, waiting

            to be kissed.

Oh, the islands of our dreaming, where the days go by

            undated!

      Oh, the laughing, brown-skinned maidens weaving

            garlands in the sun!

Oh, the soul cut loose from Mammon, with contentment

            saturated!

      Oh, the naked brown-skinned babies where the purr-

            ing ripples run!

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