Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies Author:Washington Irving General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1884 Original Publisher: R. Worthington Subjects: Fiction / Literary Fiction / Short Stories Literary Collections / General Literary Collections / American / General Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / American / Gener... more »al Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE ENCHANTED ISLAND. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK. Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud, And wave thy purple wings. Now all thy figures are allowed. And various shapes of things. Create of airy forms a stream; It must have blood and nought of phlegm; And though it be a walking dream, Yet let it like an odor rise To all the senses here, And fall like sleep upon their eyes, Or music on their ear. -- Ben Jonson. "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy," and among these may be placed that marvel and mystery of the seas, the island of St. Brandan. Every school-boy can enumerate and call by name the Canaries, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients; which, according to some ingenious speculative minds, are mere wrecks and remnants of the vast island of Atalantis, mentioned by Plato, as having been swallowed up by the ocean. Whoever has read the history of those isles, will remember the wonders told of another island, still more beautiful, seen occasionally from their shores, stretching away in the clear bright west, with long shadowy promontories, and high, sun- gilt peaks. Numerous expeditions, both in ancient and modern days, have launched forth from the Canaries in quest of that island; but, on their approach, mountain and promontory have gradually faded away, until nothing has...« less