The Poetry Corner

Ultima Thule

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

DEDICATION TO G.W.G. With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, oh, whither?Are not these The tempest-haunted Hebrides, Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar, And wreck and sea-weed line the shore? Ultima Thule!Utmost Isle! Here in thy harbors for a while We lower our sails; a while we rest From the unending, endless quest.