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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Robert Alden Sanborn

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Island

Robert Alden Sanborn

UPON a silent island

In your bosom I am shut.

I wandered on the island

In a pale noon, and a hut

I found within the island

Dusk of willow, elm and fern—

Alone amid the island,

A shadow in an urn.

It is a fairy island—

I never shall escape

Until the willowed island

Shall change its wistful shape;

Until the urn shall shatter,

And the shadow slake

The frail wish of the sleeper,

And she shall wake.

I dare not stir the island

Silence with a happy word;

I dread to shake the island

With a plea that may be heard;

So in sleep I keep the island,

Mate its dream with one mine own,

Lest into life the island break,

And leave me all alone.