Far in the western ocean’s breast The summer fairies have found a nest; The heavens ever unclouded smile Over the breadth of their beautiful isle; Through it a hundred streamlets flow, In spangled paths, to the sea below, And woo the vales that beside them lie With a low and tremulous minstrelsy. The elfin brood have homes they love In the earth below and skies above; But the haunt which of all they love the best Is the palm-crowned isle, in the ocean’s breast, That mortals call Canary; And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy, And each laughing fay and lithesome fairy, Know well the mystical way in the West To the sweet isle of Canary. II. With an ever-sounding choral chant, And a clear, cerulean, wild desire To clasp that fairy island nigher, The sinuous waves of ocean pant; For here all natural things are free To mingle in passionate harmony. The light from their mirror turns away With a golden splendour, in the day, But nightly, when coroneted Even Marshals the shining queen of heaven, There gleams a silvery scenery, From the rim of the great prismatic sea Around the isle of Canary To the central crags of Pisgatiri, Where the crested eagle builds his eyry, Scanning the shores of sweet Canary. III. Lustrously sailing here and there, Afloat in the beatific air, Birds, of purple and blue and gold, Pour out their music manifold; All day long in the leas they sing, While the sun-kissed flowers are blossoming; At eve, when the dew-drop feeds the rose, And the fragrant water-lilies close, The marvellous-throated nightingale With a dying music floods each vale, Till the seaward breezes, listening, stay To catch the harmony of his lay And cool the air of Canary; And thus the melodies ever vary, In the vales of the ocean aviary, In the blissful valleys of sweet Canary. IV. The Elle-King’s palace was builded there By elves of water and earth and air; Lovingly worked each loyal sprite, And it grew to life in a summer night. Over the sheen of its limpid moat, Wafted along, in a magic boat, By fairy wings that fan the sails, And eddying through enchanted vales, Through walls of amber and crystal gates, We come where a fairy warder waits; And so, by many a winding way Where sweet bells jingle and fountains play, To the inmost, royalest room of all,— The elfin monarch’s reception-hall, The pearl and pride of Canary! To guard its fastness the elves are wary, And no weird thing, of pleasure chary, Can enter with evil in sweet Canary! V.