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.