✦ The Poem ✦
The Island
by A. A. Milne, from When We Were Very Young (1924). Public domain in the United States.
If I had a ship, I’d sail my ship, I’d sail my ship Through Eastern seas; Down to a beach where the slow waves thunder— The green curls over and the white falls under— Boom! Boom! Boom! On the sun-bright sand. Then I’d leave my ship and I’d land, And climb the steep white sand, And climb to the trees, The six dark trees, The coco-nut trees on the cliff’s green crown— Hands and knees To the coco-nut trees, Face to the cliff as the stones patter down, Up, up, up, staggering, stumbling, Round the corner where the rock is crumbling, Round this shoulder, Over this boulder, Up to the top where the six trees stand. . . .
And there would I rest, and lie, My chin in my hands, and gaze At the dazzle of sand below, And the green waves curling slow, And the grey-blue distant haze Where the sea goes up to the sky. . . .
And I’d say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea: “There’s nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me.”